orgotten to make her otherwise; and he could not know or
understand how she came to do things that he would not do. But she
could know and understand why his hand fell on Krool like that of Cain
on Abel. She softened, changed at once.

"Yes, I remember," she said. "I've been upset. Krool was insolent, and
I ordered him to go. He would not."

"I've been a fool to keep him all these years. I didn't know what he
was--a traitor, the slimmest of the slim, a real Hottentot-Boer. I was
pigheaded about him, because he seemed to care so much about me. That
counts for much with the most of us."

"Alice Tynemouth saw a policeman help him into a cab in Piccadilly and
take him away. Will there be trouble?"

A grim look crossed his face. "I think not," he responded. "There are
reasons. He has been stealing information for years, and sending it to
Kruger, he and--"

He stopped short, and into his face came a look of sullen reticence.

"Yes, he and--and some one else? Who else?" Her face was white. She had
a sudden intuition.

He met her eyes. "Adrian Fellowes--what Fellowes knew, Krool knew, and
one way or another, by one means or another, Fellowes knew a great
deal."

The knowledge of Adrian Fellowes' treachery and its full significance
had hardly come home to him, even when he punished Krool, so shaken was
he by the fact that the half-caste had been false to him. Afterwards,
however, as the Partners all talked together up-stairs, the enormity of
the dead man's crime had fastened on him, and his brain had been
stunned by the terrible thought that directly or indirectly Jasmine had
abetted the crime. Things he had talked over with her, and with no one
else, had got to Kruger's knowledge, as the information from South
Africa showed. She had at least been indiscreet, had talked to Fellowes
with some freedom or he could not have known what he did. But directly,
knowingly abetted Fellowes? Of course, she had not done that; but her
foolish confidences had abetted treachery, had wronged him, had helped
to destroy his plans, had injured England.

He had savagely punished Krool for insolence to her and for his
treachery, but a new feeling had grown up in him in the last half-hour.
Under the open taunts of his colleagues, a deep resentment had taken
possession of him that his work, so hard to do, so important and
critical, should have been circumvented by the indiscretions of his
wife.

Upon her now this announcement came with cru