She had mistaken the look in his eyes.  It was the same look as the look in hers, and in spite of all the months that had gone, both asked the same question as in the hour when they last parted.  The dead man stood between them, as he had never stood in life—­of infinitely more importance than he had ever been in life.  He had never come between Rudyard and herself in the old life in any vital sense, not in any sense that finally mattered.  He had only been an incident; not part of real life, but part of a general wastage of character; not a disintegrating factor in itself.  Ah, no, not Adrian Fellowes, not him!  It enraged her that Rudyard should think the dead man had had any sway over her.  It was a needless degradation, against which she revolted now.

“Why have you come here—­to this room?” she asked coldly.

As a boy flushes when he has been asked a disconcerting question which angers him or challenges his innocence, so Rudyard’s face suffused; but the flush faded as quickly as it came.  His eyes then looked at her steadily, the whites of them so white because of his bronzed face and forehead, the glance firmer by far than in his old days in London.  There was none of that unmanageable emotion in his features, the panic excitement, the savage disorder which were there on the day when Adrian Fellowes’ letter brought the crisis to their lives; none of the barbaric storm which drove Krool down the staircase under the sjambok.  Here was force and iron strength, though the man seemed older, his thick hair streaked with grey, while there was a deep fissure between the eyebrows.  The months had hardened him physically, had freed him from all superfluous flesh; and the flabbiness had wholly gone from his cheeks and chin.  There was no sign of a luxurious life about him.  He was merely the business-like soldier with work to do.  His khaki fitted him as only uniform can fit a man with a physique without defect.  He carried in his hand a short whip of rhinoceros-hide, and as he placed his hands upon his hips and looked at Jasmine meditatively, before he answered her question, she recalled the scene with Krool.  Her eyes were fascinated by the whip in his hand.  It seemed to her, all at once, as though she was to be the victim of his wrath, and that the whip would presently fall upon her shoulders, as he drove her out into the veld.  But his eyes drew hers to his own presently, and even while he spoke to her now, the illusion of the sjambok remained, and she imagined his voice to be intermingling with the dull thud of the whip on her shoulders.

“I came to see one of my troop who was wounded at Wortmann’s Drift,” he answered her.

“Old Gunter,” she said mechanically.

“Old Gunter, if you like,” he returned, surprised.  “How did you know?”

“The world gossips still,” she rejoined bitterly.

“Well, I came to see Gunter.”

“On the grey mare,” she said again like one in a dream.