ok of Rudyard and Jasmine was
closed forever. Her mind was in chaos, her senses in confusion. She
seemed like one in a vague shifting, agonizing dream.

She was unconscious of what her friendly Corporal was saying. She only
answered him mechanically now and then; and he, seeing that she was
distraught, talked on in a comforting kind of way, telling her
anecdotes of Rudyard, as they were told in that part of the army to
which he belonged.

What was she going to do when she arrived? What could she do if Rudyard
was dead? If Rudyard was still alive, she would make him understand
that she was not the Jasmine of the days "before the flood"--before
that storm came which uprooted all that ever was in her life except the
old, often anguished, longing to be good, and the power which swept her
into bye and forbidden paths. If he was gone, deaf to her voice and to
any mortal sound, then--there rushed into her vision the figure of Ian
Stafford, but she put that from her with a trembling determination.
That was done forever. She was as sure of it as she was sure of
anything in the world. Ian had not forgiven her, would never forgive
her. He despised her, rejected her, abhorred her. Ian had saved her
from the result of Rudyard's rash retaliation and fury, and had then
repulsed her, bidden her stand off from him with a magnanimity and a
chivalry which had humiliated her. He had protected her from the shame
of an open tragedy, and then had shut the door in her face. Rudyard,
with the same evidence as Ian held,--the same letter as proof--he,
whatever he believed or thought, he had forgiven her. Only a few nights
ago, that night before the fight at Hetmeyer's Kopje, he had opened his
arms to her and called her his wife. In Rudyard was some great good
thing, something which could not die, which must live on. She sat up
straight in the seat of the cart, her hands clinched.

No, no, no, Rudyard was not dead, and he should not die. It mattered
not what Al'mah had written, she must have her chance to prove herself;
his big soul must have its chance to run a long course, must not be cut
off at the moment when so much had been done; when there was so much to
do. Ian should see that she was not "just a little burst of eloquence,"
as he had called her, not just a strumpet, as he thought her; but a
woman now, beyond eloquence, far distant from the poppy-fields of
pleasure. She was young enough for it to be a virtue in her to avoid
the poppy-fie