prehension. Was there not also a
look of aversion?

"Everything seems to come all at once," Al'mah continued, as though in
explanation.

Jasmine had no inkling as to what the meaning of the words was; and,
with something of her old desire to conquer those who were alien to
her, she smiled winningly.

"Yes, things concentrate in life," she rejoined.

"I've noticed that," was the reply. "Fate seems to scatter, and then to
gather in all at once, as though we were all feather-toys on strings."

After a moment, as Al'mah regarded her with vague wonder, though now
she smiled too, and the anxiety, apprehension, and pain went from her
face, Jasmine said: "Why did you come here? You had a world to work for
in England."

"I had a world to forget in England," Al'mah replied. Then she added
suddenly, "I could not sing any longer."

"Your voice--what happened to it?" Jasmine asked.

"One doesn't sing with one's voice only. The music is far behind the
voice."

They had been standing in the middle of the hallway. Suddenly Al'mah
caught at Jasmine's sleeve. "Will you come with me?" she said.

She led the way into a room which was almost gay with veld
everlastings, pictures from illustrated papers, small flags of the navy
and the colonies, the Boer Vierkleur and the Union Jack.

"I like to have things cheerful here," Al'mah said almost gaily.
"Sometimes I have four or five convalescents in here, and they like a
little gaiety. I sing them things from comic operas--Offenbach,
Sullivan, and the rest; and if they are very sentimentally inclined I
sing them good old-fashioned love-songs full of the musician's tricks.
How people adore illusions! I've had here an old Natal sergeant, over
sixty, and he was as cracked as could be about songs belonging to the
time when we don't know that it's all illusion, and that there's no
such thing as Love, nor ever was; but only a kind of mirage of the
mind, a sort of phantasy that seizes us, in which we do crazy things,
and sometimes, if the phantasy is strong enough, we do awful things.
But still the illusions remain in spite of everything, as they did with
the old sergeant. I've heard the most painful stories here from men
before they died, of women that were false, and injuries done, many,
many years ago; and they couldn't see that it wasn't real at all, but
just phantasy."

"All the world's mad," responded Jasmine wearily, as Al'mah paused.

Al'mah nodded. "So I laugh a good deal, and