“Not like the roses shall our love be, dear—­”

Stafford made no motion to return the letter.  He caught and held Rudyard’s eyes.

“You ask me to tell you what I think of the man who wrote this letter,” he said, thickly and slowly, for he was like one paralyzed, regaining his speech with blanching effort:  “Byng, I think what you think—­all you think; but I would not do what you want to do.”

As he had read the letter the whole horror of the situation burst upon him.  Jasmine had deceived her husband when she turned to himself, and that was to be understood—­to be understood, if not to be pardoned.  A woman might marry, thinking she cared, and all too soon, sometimes before the second day had dawned, learn that shrinking and repugnance which not even habit can modify or obscure.  A girl might be mistaken, with her heart and nature undeveloped, and with that closer intimate life with another of another sex still untried.  With the transition from maidenhood to wifehood, fateful beyond all transitions, yet unmade, she might be mistaken once; as so many have been in the revelations of first intimacy; but not twice, not the second time.  It was not possible to be mistaken in so vital a thing twice.  This was merely a wilful, miserable degeneracy.  Rudyard had been wronged—­terribly wronged—­by himself, by Jasmine; but he had loved Jasmine since she was a child, before Rudyard came—­in truth, he all but possessed her when Rudyard came; and there was some explanation, if no excuse, for that betrayal; but this other, it was incredible, it was monstrous.  It was incredible but yet it was true.  Thoughts that overturned all his past, that made a melee of his life, rushed and whirled through his mind as he read the letter with assumed deliberation when he saw what it was.  He read slowly that he might make up his mind how to act, what to say and do in this crisis.  To do—­what?  Jasmine had betrayed him long ago when she had thrown him over for Rudyard, and now she had betrayed him again after she had married Rudyard, and betrayed Rudyard, too; and for whom this second betrayal?  His heart seemed to shrink to nothingness.  This business dated far beyond yesterday.  The letter furnished that sure evidence.

What to do?  Like lightning his mind was made up.  What to do?  Ah, but one thing to do—­only one thing to do—­save her at any cost, somehow save her!  Whatever she was, whatever she had done, however she had spoiled his life and destroyed forever his faith, yet he too had betrayed this broken man before him, with the look in his eyes of an animal at bay, ready to do the last irretrievable thing.  Even as her shameless treatment of himself smote him; lowered him to that dust which is ground from the heels of merciless humanity—­even as it sickened his soul beyond recovery in this world, up from the lowest depths of his being there came the indestructible thing.  It was the thing that never dies, the love that defies injury, shame, crime, deceit, and desertion, and lives pityingly on, knowing all, enduring all, desiring no touch, no communion, yet prevailing—­the indestructible thing.