nctuary, may not be dislodged.
It stays on when the darkness comes, reigning in the gloom. Even
betrayal, injury, tyranny, do not drive it forth. It continues. No
longer is the curtain drawn aside for tribute, for appeal, or for
adoration, but It remains until the last footfall dies in the temple,
and the portals ate closed forever.

For Stafford the curtain was drawn before the shrine; but love was
behind the curtain still.

He would not go to her as Barry had asked. There in Brinkwort's house
in the covert of peaches and pomegranates was the man and the only man
who should, who must, bring new bloom to her cheek. Her suffering would
carry her to Rudyard at the last, unless it might be that one or the
other of them had taken Adrian Fellowes' life. If either had done that,
there could be no reunion.

He did not know what Al'mah had told Jasmine, the thing which had
cleared Jasmine's vision, and made possible a path which should lead
from the hospital to the house among the orchard-trees at Brinkwort's
Farm.

No, he would not, could not go to Jasmine--unless, it might be, she was
dying. A sudden, sharp anxiety possessed him. If, as Barry Whalen
suggested, one of those ugly turns should come, which illnesses take in
camp, and she should die without a friend near her, without Rudyard by
her side! He mounted his horse, and rode towards the hospital.

His inquiries at the hospital relieved his mind. "If there is no turn
for the worse, no complications, she will go on all right, and will be
convalescent in a few days," the medicine-man had said.

He gave instructions for a message to be sent to him if there was any
change for the worse. His first impulse, to tell them not to let her
know he had inquired, he set aside. There must not be subterfuge or
secrecy any longer. Let Destiny take her course.

As he left the hospital, he heard a wounded Boer prisoner say to a
Tommy who had fought with him on opposite sides in the same engagement,
"Alles zal recht kom!" All will come right, was the English of it.

Out of the agony of conflict would all come right--for Boer, for
Briton, for Rudyard, for Jasmine, for himself, for Al'mah?

As he entered his tent again, he was handed his mail, which had just
arrived. The first letter he touched had the postmark of Durban. The
address on the envelope was in the handwriting of Lady Tynemouth.

He almost shrank from opening it, because of the tragedy which had come
to the husband of