d, firmly. "Rudyard loves you. Begin
again with him." His voice became lower. "You know the emptiness of
your home. There is a way to make some recompense to him. You can pay
your debt. Give him what he wants so much. It would be a link. It would
bind you. A child ..."

"Oh, how you loathe me!" she said, shudderingly. "Yesterday--and now...
No, no, no," she added, "I will not, cannot live with Rudyard. I cannot
wrench myself from one world into another like that. I will not live
with him any more.... There--listen."

Outside the newsboys were calling:

"Extra speshul! Extra speshul! All about the war! War declared! Extra
speshul!"

"War! That will separate many," she added. "It will separate Rudyard
and me.... No, no, there will be no more scandal.... But it is the way
of escape--the war."

"The way of escape for us all, perhaps," he answered, with a light of
determination in his eyes. "Good-bye," he added, after a slight pause.
"There is nothing more to say."

He turned to go, but he did not hold out his hand, nor even look at her.

"Tell me," she said, in a strange, cold tone, "tell me, did Adrian
Fellowes--did he protect me? Did he stand up for me? Did he defend me?"

"He was concerned only for himself," Ian answered, hesitatingly.

Her face hardened. Pitiful, haggard lines had come into it in the last
half-hour, and they deepened still more.

"He did not say one word to put me right?"

Ian shook his head in negation. "What did you expect?" he said.

She sank into a chair, and a strange cruelty came into her eyes,
something so hard that it looked grotesque in the beautiful setting of
her pain-worn, exquisite face.

So utter was her dejection that he came back from the door and bent
over her.

"Jasmine," he said, gently, "we have to start again, you and I--in
different paths. They will never meet. But at the end of the
road--peace. Peace the best thing of all. Let us try and find it,
Jasmine."

"He did not try to protect me. He did not defend me," she kept saying
to herself, and was only half conscious of what Ian said to her.

He touched her shoulder. "Nothing can set things right between you and
me, Jasmine," he added, unsteadily, "but there's Rudyard--you must help
him through. He heard scandal about Mennaval last night at De Lancy
Scovel's. He didn't believe it. It rests with you to give it all the
lie.... Good-bye."

In a moment he was gone. As the door closed she sprang to her feet.
"Ian--