"I understand still less."

She took from the writing-table her cheque-book, and handed it to him.

He looked at it, and read the counterfoil of the cheque she had given to Alice Tynemouth.

He was bewildered. "What does this mean?" he asked.

"It is for a hospital-ship."

"Sixty thousand pounds! Why, it is nearly all you have."

"It is two-thirds of what I have."

"Why--in G.o.d's name, why?"

"To buy my freedom," she answered, bitterly.

"From what?"

"From you."

He staggered back and leaned heavily against a bookcase.

"Freedom from me!" he exclaimed, hoa.r.s.ely.

He had had terribly bitter and revengeful feelings during the last hour, but all at once his real self emerged, the thing that was deepest in him. "Freedom from me? Has it come to that?"

"Yes, absolutely. Do you remember the day you first said to me that something was wrong with it all,--the day that Ian Stafford dined after his return from abroad? Well, it has been all wrong--cruelly wrong. We haven't made the best of things together, when everything was with us to do so. I have spoiled it all. It hasn't been what you expected."

"Nor what you expected?" he asked, sharply.

"Nor what I expected; but you are not to blame for that."

Suddenly all he had ever felt for her swept through his being, and sullenness fled away. "You have ceased to love me, then.... See, that is the one thing that matters, Jasmine. All else disappears beside that. Do you love me? Do you love me still? Do you love me, Jasmine?

Answer that."

He looked like the ghost of his old dead self, pleading to be recognized.

His misery oppressed her. "What does one know of one's self in the midst of all this--of everything that has nothing to do with love?" she asked.

What she might have said in the dark mood which was coming on her again it is hard to say, but from beneath the window of the room which looked on Park Lane, there came the voice of a street-minstrel, singing to a travelling piano, played by sympathetic fingers, the song:

"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, And lovers around her are sighing--"

The simple pathos of the song had nothing to do with her own experience or her own case, but the flood of it swept through her veins like tears. She sank into a chair and listened for a moment with eyes shining, then she sprang up in an agitation which made her tremble and her face go white.

"No, no, no, Rudyard, I do not love you," she said, swiftly. "And because I do not love you, I will not stay. I never loved you, never truly loved you at any time. I never knew myself--that is all that I can say. I never was awake till now. I never was wholly awake till I saw you driving Krool into the street with the sjambok."

She flung up her hands. "For G.o.d's sake, let me be truthful at last. I don't want to hurt you--I have hurt you enough, but I do not love you; and I must go. I am going with Alice Tynemouth. We are going together to do something. Maybe I shall learn what will make life possible."

He reached out his arms towards her with a sudden tenderness.

"No, no, no, do not touch me," she cried. "Do not come near me. I must be alone now, and from now on and on.... You do not understand, but I must be alone. I must work it out alone, whatever it is."

She got up with a quick energy, and went over to the writing-table again. "It may take every penny I have got, but I shall do it, because it is the thing I feel I must do."

"You have millions, Jasmine," he said, in a low, appealing voice.

She looked at him almost fiercely again. "No, I have what is my own, my very own, and no more," she responded, bitterly. "You will do your work, and I will do mine. You will stay here. There will be no scandal, because I shall be going with Alice Tynemouth, and the world will not misunderstand."

"There will be no scandal, because I am going, too," he said, firmly.

"No, no, you cannot, must not, go," she urged.

"I am going to South Africa in two days," he replied. "Stafford was going with me, but he cannot go for a week or so. He will help you, I am sure, with forming your committee and arranging, if you will insist on doing this thing. He is still up-stairs there with the rest of them.

I will get him down now, I--"

"Ian Stafford is here--in this house?" she asked, with staring eyes.

What inconceivable irony it all was! She could have shrieked with that laughter which is more painful far than tears.

"Yes, he is up-stairs. I made him come and help us--he knows the international game. He will help you, too. He is a good friend--you will know how good some day."

She went white and leaned against the table.

"No, I shall not need him," she said. "We have formed our committee."

"But when I am gone, he can advise you, he can--"

"Oh--oh!" she murmured, and swayed forward, fainting.

He caught her and lowered her gently into a chair.

"You are only mad," he whispered to ears which heard not as he bent over her. "You will be sane some day."

BOOK IV

CHAPTER XXIX

THE MENACE OF THE MOUNTAIN

Far away, sharply cutting the ether, rise the great sterile peaks and ridges. Here a stark, bare wall like a prison which shuts in a city of men forbidden the blithe world of sun and song and freedom; yonder, a giant of a lost world stretched out in stony ease, sleeping on, while over his grey quiet, generations of men pa.s.s. First came savage, warring, brown races alien to each other; then following, white races with faces tanned and burnt by the sun, and smothered in unkempt beard and hair--men restless and coa.r.s.e and brave, and with ancient sins upon them; but with the Bible in their hands and the language of the prophets on their lips; with iron will, with hatred as deep as their race-love is strong; they with their cattle and their herds, and the clacking wagons carrying homes and fortunes, whose women were housewives and warriors too. Coming after these, men of fairer aspect, adventurous, self-willed, intent to make cities in the wilderness; to win open s.p.a.ces for their kinsmen, who had no room to swing the hammer in the workshops of their far-off northern island homes; or who, having room, stood helpless before the furnaces where the fires had left only the ashes of past energies.