ittle
laugh of triumph, her eyes brighter than he had ever seen them. They
were glowing with a fire of excitement which was like a fever devouring
the spirit, with little dark, flying banners of fate or tragedy behind.

Strange that he caught the inner meaning of it as he looked into her
eyes now. In the depths of those eyes, where long ago he had drowned
his spirit, it was as though he saw an army of reckless battalions
marching to a great battle; but behind all were the black wings of
vultures--pinions of sorrow following the gay brigades. Even as he
gazed at her, something ominous and threatening caught his heart, and,
with the end of his great enterprise in sight, a black premonition
smothered him.

But with a smile he said: "Well, it does look as though we are near the
end of the journey."

"And 'journeys end in lovers' meeting,'" she whispered softly, lowered
her eyes, and then raised them again to his.

The light in them blinded him. Had he not always loved her--before any
one came, before Rudyard came, before the world knew her? All that he
had ever felt in the vanished days rushed upon him with intolerable
force. Through his life-work, through his ambition, through helping him
as no one else could have done at the time of crisis, she had reached
the farthest confines of his nature. She had woven, thread by thread,
the magic carpet of that secret companionship by which the best as the
worst of souls are sometimes carried into a land enchanted--for a brief
moment, before Fate stoops down and hangs a veil of plague over the
scene of beauty, passion, and madness.

Her eyes, full of liquid fire, met his. They half closed as her body
swayed slightly towards him.

With a cry, almost rough in its intensity, he caught her in his arms
and buried his face in the soft harvest of her hair. "Jasmine--Jasmine,
my love!" he murmured.

Suddenly she broke from him. "Oh no--oh no, Ian! The work is not done.
I can't take my pay before I have earned it--such pay--such pay."

He caught her hands and held them fast. "Nothing can alter what is. It
stands. Whatever the end, whatever happens to the thing I want to do,
I--"

He drew her closer.

"You say this before we know what Moravia will do; you--oh, Ian, tell
me it is not simply gratitude, and because I tried to help you; not
only because--"

He interrupted her with a passionate gesture. "It belonged at first to
what you were doing for me. Now it is by itself, that wh