soothe his heart, and then went in to Mennaval. There, in the
arrangements to be made with Moravia he forgot the galling incident;
and for hours afterward it was set aside. When, however, he left his
club, his supper over, after scribbling letters which he put in his
pocket absent-mindedly, and having completed his work at the Foreign
Office, it came back to his mind with sudden and scorching force.

Landrassy's insult to Jasmine rankled as nothing had ever rankled in
his mind before, not even that letter which she had written him so long
ago announcing her intended marriage to Byng. He was fresh from the
first triumph of his life: he ought to be singing with joy, shouting to
the four corners of the universe his pride, walking on air, finding the
world a good, kind place made especially for him--his oyster to open,
his nut which he had cracked; yet here he was fresh from the applause
of his chief, with a strange heaviness at his heart, a gloom upon his
mind.

Victory in his great fight--and love; he had them both and so he said
to himself as he opened the door of his rooms and entered upon their
comfort and quiet. He had love, and he had success; and the one had
helped to give him the other, helped in a way which was wonderful, and
so brilliantly skilful and delicate. As he poured out a glass of water,
however, the thought stung him that the nature of the success and its
value depended on the nature of the love and its value. As the love
was, so was the success, no higher, no different, since the one, in
some deep way, begot the other. Yes, it was certain that the thing
could not have been done at this time without Jasmine, and if not at
this time, then the chances were a thousand to one that it never could
be done at any time; for Britain's enemies would be on her back while
she would have to fight in South Africa. The result of that would mean
a shattered, humiliated land, with a people in pawn to the will of a
rising power across the northern sea. That it had been prevented just
in the nick of time was due to Jasmine, his fate, the power that must
beat in his veins till the end of all things.

Yet what was the end to be? To-day he had buried his face in her
wonderful cloud of hair and had kissed her; and with it, almost on the
instant, had come the end of his great struggle for England and
himself; and for that he was willing to pay any price that time and
Nemesis might demand--any price save one.

As he thought