She placed in her friend’s hand a long, narrow slip of paper.  Lady Tynemouth looked astonished, gazed hard at the paper, then sprang to her feet, pale and agitated.

“Jasmine—­you—­this—­sixty thousand pounds!” she cried.  “A cheque for sixty thousand pounds—­Jasmine!”

There was a strange brilliance in Jasmine’s eyes, a hectic flush on her cheek.

“It must not be cashed for forty-eight hours; but after that the money will be there.”

Lady Tynemouth caught Jasmine’s shoulders in her trembling yet strong fingers, and looked into the wild eyes with searching inquiry and solicitude.

“But, Jasmine, it isn’t possible.  Will Rudyard—­can you afford it?”

“That will not be Rudyard’s money which you will get.  It will be all my own.”

“But you yourself are not rich.  Sixty thousand pounds—­why?”

“It is because it is a sacrifice to me that I give it; because it is my own; because it is two-thirds of what I possess.  And if all is needed before we have finished, then all shall go.”

Alice Tynemouth still held the shoulders, still gazed into the eyes which burned and shone, which seemed to look beyond this room into some world of the soul or imagination.  “Jasmine, you are not crazy, are you?” she asked, excitedly.  “You will not repent of this?  It is not a sudden impulse?”

“Yes, it is a sudden impulse; it came to me all at once.  But when it came I knew it was the right thing, the only thing to do.  I will not repent of it.  Have no fear.  It is final.  It is sure.  It means that, like you, I have found a rope to drag myself out of this stream which sweeps me on to the rapids.”

“Jasmine, do you mean that you will—­that you are coming, too?”

“Yes, I am going with you.  We will do it together.  You shall lead, and I shall help.  I have a gift for organization.  My grandfather? he—­”

“All the world knows that.  If you have anything of his gift, we shall not fail.  We shall feel that we are doing something for our country—­and, oh, so much for ourselves!  And we shall be near our men.  Tynie and Ruddy Byng will be out there, and we shall be ready for anything if necessary.  But Rudyard, will he approve?” She held up the cheque.

Jasmine made a passionate gesture.  “There are times when we must do what something in us tells us to do, no matter what the consequences.  I am myself.  I am not a slave.  If I take my own way in the pleasures of life, why should I not take it in the duties and the business of life?”

Her eyes took on a look of abstraction, and her small hand closed on the large, capable hand of her friend.  “Isn’t work the secret of life?  My grandfather used to say it was.  Always, always, he used to say to me, ’Do something, Jasmine.  Find a work to do, and do it.  Make the world look at you, not for what you seem to be, but for what you do.  Work cures nearly every illness and nearly every trouble’—­that is what he said.  And I must work or go mad.  I tell you I must work, Alice.  We will work together out there where great battles will be fought.”