to a miracle: and these made themselves fit by hard
riding or walking or rowing, or in some school of physical culture,
that they might take a war job on, if, and when, it was going.

Among all these Ian Stafford moved with an undercurrent of agitation
and anxiety unseen in his face, step, motion, or gesture. For days he
was never near the Foreign Office, and then for days he was there
almost continuously; yet there was scarcely a day when he did not see
Jasmine. Also there were few days in the week when Jasmine did not see
M. Mennaval, the ambassador for Moravia--not always at her own house,
but where the ambassador chanced to be of an evening, at a fashionable
restaurant, or at some notable function. This situation had not been
difficult to establish; and, once established, meetings between the
lady and monsieur were arranged with that skill which belongs to woman
and to diplomacy.

Once or twice at the beginning Jasmine's chance question concerning the
ambassador's engagements made M. Mennaval keen to give information as
to his goings and comings. Thus if they met naturally, it was also so
constantly that people gossiped; but at first, certainly, not to
Jasmine's grave disadvantage, for M. Mennaval was thought to be less
dangerous than impressionable.

In that, however, he was somewhat maligned, for his penchant for
beautiful and "select" ladies had capacities of development almost
unguessed. Previously Jasmine had never shown him any marked
preference; and when, at first, he met her in town on her return from
Wales he was no more than watchfully courteous and admiring. When,
however, he found her in a receptive mood, and evidently taking
pleasure in his society, his vanity expanded greatly. He at once became
possessed by an absorbing interest in the woman who, of all others in
London, had gifts which were not merely physical, but of a kind that
stimulate the mind and rouse those sensibilities so easily dulled by
dull and material people. Jasmine had her material side; but there was
in her the very triumph of the imaginative also; and through it the
material became alive, buoyant and magnetic.

Without that magnetic power which belonged to the sensuous part of her
she would not have gained control of M. Mennaval's mind, for it was
keen, suspicious, almost abnormally acute; and, while lacking real
power, it protected itself against the power of others by assembled and
well-disciplined adroitness and evasions.

V