s and bills--even business had an air of
taste where Jasmine was. And there on a table beside her bed was a
large silver-framed photograph of himself turned at an angle toward the
pillow where she would lay her head.

How tender and delicate and innocent it all was! He looked round the
room with new eyes, as though seeing everything for the first time.
There was another photograph of himself on her dressing-table. It had
no companion there; but on another table near were many photographs;
four of women, the rest of men: celebrities, old friends like Ian
Stafford--and M. Mennaval.

His face hardened. De Lancy Scovel's black slander swept through his
veins like fire again, his heart came up in his throat, his fingers
clinched.

Presently, as he stood with clouded face and mist in his eyes,
Jasmine's maid entered, and, surprised at seeing him, retreated again,
but her eyes fastened for a moment strangely on the white rose he held
in his hand. Her glance drew his own attention to it again. Going over
to the gracious and luxurious bed, with its blue silk canopy, he laid
the white rose on her pillow. Somehow it was more like an offering to
the dead than a lover's tribute to the living. His eyes were fogged,
his lips were set. But all he was then in mind and body and soul he
laid with the rose on her pillow.

As he left the rose there, his eyes wandered slowly over this retreat
of rest and sleep: white robe-de-nuit, blue silk canopy, blue slippers,
blue dressing-gown--all blue, the colour in which he had first seen her.

Slowly he turned away at last and went to his own room. But the picture
followed him. It kept shining in his eyes. Krool's face suddenly
darkened it.

"You not ring, Baas," Krool said.

Without a word Rudyard waved him away, a sudden and unaccountable fury
in his mind. Why did the sight of Krool vex him so?

"Come back," he said, angrily, before the door of the bedroom closed.

Krool returned.

"Weren't there any cables? Why didn't you come to Mr. Scovel's at
midnight, as I told you?"

"Baas, I was there at midnight, but they all say you come home, Baas.
There the cable--two." He pointed to the dressing-table.

Byng snatched them, tore them open, read them.

One had the single word, "Tomorrow." The other said, "Prepare." The
code had been abandoned. Tragedy needs few words.

They meant that to-morrow Kruger's ultimatum would be delivered and
that the worst must be faced.

He glanced at the