CHAPTER XXXIII

"ALAMACHTIG!"

When Rudyard flung himself on the grey mare outside Jasmine's window at
the Stay Awhile Hospital, and touched her flank with his heel, his
heart was heavy with passion, his face hard with humiliation and
defeat. He had held out the hand of reconciliation, and she had met it
with scorn. He had smothered his resentment, and let the light of peace
in upon their troubles, and she had ruthlessly drawn a black curtain
between them. He was going upon as dangerous a task as could be set a
soldier, from which he might never return, and she had not even said a
God-be-with-you--she who had lain in his bosom, been so near, so dear,
so cherished:

"For Time and Change estrange, estrange--
And, now they have looked and seen us,
Oh, we that were dear, we are all too near,
With the thick of the world between us!"

How odd it seemed that two beings who had been all in all to each
other, who in the prime of their love would have died of protesting
shame, if they had been told that they would change towards each other,
should come to a day when they would be less to each other than
strangers, less and colder and farther off! It is because some cannot
bear this desecration of ideals, this intolerable loss of life's
assets, that they cling on and on, long after respect and love have
gone, after hope is dead.

There had been times in the past few months when such thoughts as these
vaguely possessed Rudyard's mind; but he could never, would never, feel
that all was over, that the book of Jasmine's life was closed to him;
not even when his whole nature was up in arms against the injury she
had done him.

But now, as the grey mare reached out to achieve the ground his
troopers had covered before him, his brain was in a storm of feeling.
After all, what harm had he done her, that he should be treated so? Was
he the sinner? Why should he make the eternal concession? Why should he
be made to seem the one needing forgiveness? He did not know why. But
at the bottom of everything lay a something--a yearning--which would
not be overwhelmed. In spite of wrong and injury, it would live on and
on; and neither Time nor crime, nor anything mortal could obliterate it
from his heart's oracles.

The hoofs of the grey mare fell like the soft thud of a hammer in the
sand, regular and precise. Presently the sound and the motion lulled
his senses. The rage and humiliation grew less, his face cooled. His
h