Outside her own room Jasmine paused for a moment and looked at the closed door of Rudyard’s room.  Only a step—­and yet she was kept apart from him by a shadow so black, so overwhelming, that she could not penetrate it.  It smothered her sight.  No, no, that little step could not be taken; there was a gulf between them which could not be bridged.

There was nothing to say to Rudyard except what could be said upon the surface, before all the world, as it were; things which must be said through an atmosphere of artificial sounds, which would give no response to the agonized cries of the sentient soul.  She could make believe before the world, but not alone with Rudyard.  She shrank within herself at the idea of being alone with him.

As she went down-stairs a scene in a room on the Thames Embankment, from which she had come a half hour ago, passed before her vision.  It was as though it had been imprinted on the film of her eye and must stay there forever.

When would the world know that Adrian Fellowes lay dead in the room on the Embankment?  And when they knew it, what would they say?  They would ask how he died—­the world would ask how he died.  The Law would ask how he died.

How had he died?  Who killed him?  Or did he die by his own hand?  Had Adrian Fellowes, the rank materialist, the bon viveur, the man-luxury, the courage to kill himself by his own hand?  If not, who killed him?  She shuddered.  They might say that she killed him.

She had seen no one on the staircase as she had gone up, but she had dimly seen another figure outside in the terrace as she came out, and there was the cabman who drove her to the place.  That was all.

Now, entering the great drawing-room of her own house she shuddered as though from an icy chill.  The scene there on the Embankment—­her own bitter anger, her frozen hatred; then the dead man with his face turned to the wall; the stillness, the clock ticking, her own cold voice speaking to him, calling; then the terrified scrutiny, the touch of the wrist, the realization, the moment’s awful horror, the silence which grew more profound, the sudden paralysis of body and will....  And then—­music, strange, soft, mysterious music coming from somewhere inside the room, music familiar and yet unnatural, a song she had heard once before, a pathetic folk-song of eastern Europe, “More Was Lost at Mohacksfield.”  It was a tale of love and loss and tragedy and despair.

Startled and overcome, she had swayed, and would have fallen, but that with an effort of the will she had caught at the table and saved herself.  With the music still creeping in unutterable melancholy through the room, she had fled, closing the door behind her very softly as though not to disturb the sleeper.  It had followed her down the staircase and into the street, the weird, unnatural music.