“Duelling had its merits,” Ian said to himself, as soon as he had recovered from the first effect of the soft, savage insolence.  “There is no way to deal with our Landrassys except to beat them, as I have done, in the business of life.”

He tossed his head with a little pardonable pride, as it were, to soothe his heart, and then went in to Mennaval.  There, in the arrangements to be made with Moravia he forgot the galling incident; and for hours afterward it was set aside.  When, however, he left his club, his supper over, after scribbling letters which he put in his pocket absent-mindedly, and having completed his work at the Foreign Office, it came back to his mind with sudden and scorching force.

Landrassy’s insult to Jasmine rankled as nothing had ever rankled in his mind before, not even that letter which she had written him so long ago announcing her intended marriage to Byng.  He was fresh from the first triumph of his life:  he ought to be singing with joy, shouting to the four corners of the universe his pride, walking on air, finding the world a good, kind place made especially for him—­his oyster to open, his nut which he had cracked; yet here he was fresh from the applause of his chief, with a strange heaviness at his heart, a gloom upon his mind.

Victory in his great fight—­and love; he had them both and so he said to himself as he opened the door of his rooms and entered upon their comfort and quiet.  He had love, and he had success; and the one had helped to give him the other, helped in a way which was wonderful, and so brilliantly skilful and delicate.  As he poured out a glass of water, however, the thought stung him that the nature of the success and its value depended on the nature of the love and its value.  As the love was, so was the success, no higher, no different, since the one, in some deep way, begot the other.  Yes, it was certain that the thing could not have been done at this time without Jasmine, and if not at this time, then the chances were a thousand to one that it never could be done at any time; for Britain’s enemies would be on her back while she would have to fight in South Africa.  The result of that would mean a shattered, humiliated land, with a people in pawn to the will of a rising power across the northern sea.  That it had been prevented just in the nick of time was due to Jasmine, his fate, the power that must beat in his veins till the end of all things.

Yet what was the end to be?  To-day he had buried his face in her wonderful cloud of hair and had kissed her; and with it, almost on the instant, had come the end of his great struggle for England and himself; and for that he was willing to pay any price that time and Nemesis might demand—­any price save one.

As he thought of that one price his lips tightened, his brow clouded, his eyes half closed with shame.