inity with death.

As she started back Al'mah closed the door behind her, and she found
herself facing Rudyard, looking into his eyes.

Al'mah had miscalculated. She did not realize Jasmine as she really
was--like one in a darkened room who leans out to the light and sun.
The old life, the old impetuous egoism, the long years of self were not
yet gone from a character composite of impulse, vanity and intensity.
This had been too daring an experiment with one of her nature, which
had within the last few months become as strangely, insistently, even
fanatically honest, as it had been elusive in the past. In spite of a
tremulous effort to govern herself and see the situation as it really
was--an effort of one who desired her good to bring her and Rudyard
together, the ruse itself became magnified to monstrous proportions,
and her spirit suddenly revolted. She felt that she had been inveigled;
that what should have been her own voluntary act of expiation and
submission, had been forced upon her, and pride, ever her most secret
enemy, took possession of her.

"I have been tricked," she said, with eyes aflame and her body
trembling. "You have trapped me here!" There was scorn and indignation
in her voice.

He did not move, but his eyes were intent upon hers and persistently
held them. He had been near to death, and his vision had been more
fully cleared than hers. He knew that this was the end of all or the
beginning of all things for them both; and though anger suddenly leaped
at the bottom of his heart, he kept it in restraint, the primitive
thing of which he had had enough.

"I did not trick you, Jasmine," he answered, in a low voice. "The
letter was sent without my knowledge or permission. Al'mah thought she
was doing us both a good turn. I never deceived you--never. I should
not have sent for you in any case. I heard you were ill and I tried to
get up and go to you; but it was not possible. Besides, they would not
let me. I wanted to go to you again, because, somehow, I felt that
midnight meeting in the hospital was a mistake; that it ended as you
would not really wish it to end."

Again, with wonderful intuition for a man who knew so little of women,
as he thought, he had said the one thing which could have cooled the
anger that drowned the overwhelming gratitude she felt at his being
alive--overwhelming, in spite of the fact that her old mad temperament
had flooded it for the moment.

He would have gone to her