His face hardened.  De Lancy Scovel’s black slander swept through his veins like fire again, his heart came up in his throat, his fingers clinched.

Presently, as he stood with clouded face and mist in his eyes, Jasmine’s maid entered, and, surprised at seeing him, retreated again, but her eyes fastened for a moment strangely on the white rose he held in his hand.  Her glance drew his own attention to it again.  Going over to the gracious and luxurious bed, with its blue silk canopy, he laid the white rose on her pillow.  Somehow it was more like an offering to the dead than a lover’s tribute to the living.  His eyes were fogged, his lips were set.  But all he was then in mind and body and soul he laid with the rose on her pillow.

As he left the rose there, his eyes wandered slowly over this retreat of rest and sleep:  white robe-de-nuit, blue silk canopy, blue slippers, blue dressing-gown—­all blue, the colour in which he had first seen her.

Slowly he turned away at last and went to his own room.  But the picture followed him.  It kept shining in his eyes.  Krool’s face suddenly darkened it.

“You not ring, Baas,” Krool said.

Without a word Rudyard waved him away, a sudden and unaccountable fury in his mind.  Why did the sight of Krool vex him so?

“Come back,” he said, angrily, before the door of the bedroom closed.

Krool returned.

“Weren’t there any cables?  Why didn’t you come to Mr. Scovel’s at midnight, as I told you?”

“Baas, I was there at midnight, but they all say you come home, Baas.  There the cable—­two.”  He pointed to the dressing-table.

Byng snatched them, tore them open, read them.

One had the single word, “Tomorrow.”  The other said, “Prepare.”  The code had been abandoned.  Tragedy needs few words.

They meant that to-morrow Kruger’s ultimatum would be delivered and that the worst must be faced.

He glanced at the cables in silence, while Krool watched him narrowly, covertly, with a depth of purpose which made his face uncanny.

“That will do, Krool; wake me at seven,” he said, quietly, but with suppressed malice in his tone.

Why was it that at that moment he could, with joy, have taken Krool by the neck and throttled him?  All the bitterness, anger and rage that he had felt an hour ago concentrated themselves upon Krool—­without reason, without cause.  Or was it that his deeper Other Self had whispered something to his mind about Krool—­something terrible and malign?

In this new mood he made up his mind that he would not see Jasmine till the morning.  How late she was!  It was one o’clock, and yet this was not the season.  She had not gone to a ball, nor were these the months of late parties.

As he tossed in his bed and his head turned restlessly on his pillow, Krool’s face kept coming before him, and it was the last thing he saw, ominous and strange, before he fell into a heavy but troubled sleep.