“The way of escape for us all, perhaps,” he answered, with a light of determination in his eyes.  “Good-bye,” he added, after a slight pause.  “There is nothing more to say.”

He turned to go, but he did not hold out his hand, nor even look at her.

“Tell me,” she said, in a strange, cold tone, “tell me, did Adrian Fellowes—­did he protect me?  Did he stand up for me?  Did he defend me?”

“He was concerned only for himself,” Ian answered, hesitatingly.

Her face hardened.  Pitiful, haggard lines had come into it in the last half-hour, and they deepened still more.

“He did not say one word to put me right?”

Ian shook his head in negation.  “What did you expect?” he said.

She sank into a chair, and a strange cruelty came into her eyes, something so hard that it looked grotesque in the beautiful setting of her pain-worn, exquisite face.

So utter was her dejection that he came back from the door and bent over her.

“Jasmine,” he said, gently, “we have to start again, you and I—­in different paths.  They will never meet.  But at the end of the road—­peace.  Peace the best thing of all.  Let us try and find it, Jasmine.”

“He did not try to protect me.  He did not defend me,” she kept saying to herself, and was only half conscious of what Ian said to her.

He touched her shoulder.  “Nothing can set things right between you and me, Jasmine,” he added, unsteadily, “but there’s Rudyard—­you must help him through.  He heard scandal about Mennaval last night at De Lancy Scovel’s.  He didn’t believe it.  It rests with you to give it all the lie....  Good-bye.”

In a moment he was gone.  As the door closed she sprang to her feet.  “Ian—­Ian—­come back,” she cried.  “Ian, one word—­one word.”

But the door did not open again.  For a moment she stood like one transfixed, staring at the place whence he had vanished, then, with a moan, she sank in a heap on the floor, and rocked to and fro like one demented.

Once the door opened quietly, and Krool’s face showed, sinister and furtive, but she did not see it, and the door closed again softly.

At last the paroxysms passed, and a haggard face looked out into the world of life and being with eyes which were drowned in misery.

“He did not defend me—­the coward!” she murmured; then she rose with a sudden effort, swayed, steadied herself, and arranged her hair in the mirror over the mantelpiece.  “The low coward!” she said again.  “But before he leaves . . . before he leaves England . . . "

As she turned to go from the room, Rudyard’s portrait on the wall met her eyes.  “I can’t go on, Rudyard,” she said to it.  “I know that now.”

Out in the streets, which Ian Stafford travelled with hasty steps, the newsboys were calling: 

“War declared!  All about the war!”

“That is the way out for me,” Stafford said, aloud, as he hastened on.  “That opens up the road....  I’m still an artillery officer.”