“Al’mah—­it is Al’mah?” she said.

Al’mah’s face turned paler, and she swayed slightly, then she recovered herself.  “Oh, it is you, Mrs. Byng!” she said, almost dazedly.

After an instant’s hesitation she held out a hand.  “It’s a queer place for it to happen,” she added.

Jasmine noticed the hesitation and wondered at the words.  She searched the other’s face.  What did Al’mah’s look mean?  It seemed composite of paralyzing surprise, of anxiety, of apprehension.  Was there not also a look of aversion?

“Everything seems to come all at once,” Al’mah continued, as though in explanation.

Jasmine had no inkling as to what the meaning of the words was; and, with something of her old desire to conquer those who were alien to her, she smiled winningly.

“Yes, things concentrate in life,” she rejoined.

“I’ve noticed that,” was the reply.  “Fate seems to scatter, and then to gather in all at once, as though we were all feather-toys on strings.”

After a moment, as Al’mah regarded her with vague wonder, though now she smiled too, and the anxiety, apprehension, and pain went from her face, Jasmine said:  “Why did you come here?  You had a world to work for in England.”

“I had a world to forget in England,” Al’mah replied.  Then she added suddenly, “I could not sing any longer.”

“Your voice—­what happened to it?” Jasmine asked.

“One doesn’t sing with one’s voice only.  The music is far behind the voice.”

They had been standing in the middle of the hallway.  Suddenly Al’mah caught at Jasmine’s sleeve.  “Will you come with me?” she said.

She led the way into a room which was almost gay with veld everlastings, pictures from illustrated papers, small flags of the navy and the colonies, the Boer Vierkleur and the Union Jack.

“I like to have things cheerful here,” Al’mah said almost gaily.  “Sometimes I have four or five convalescents in here, and they like a little gaiety.  I sing them things from comic operas—­Offenbach, Sullivan, and the rest; and if they are very sentimentally inclined I sing them good old-fashioned love-songs full of the musician’s tricks.  How people adore illusions!  I’ve had here an old Natal sergeant, over sixty, and he was as cracked as could be about songs belonging to the time when we don’t know that it’s all illusion, and that there’s no such thing as Love, nor ever was; but only a kind of mirage of the mind, a sort of phantasy that seizes us, in which we do crazy things, and sometimes, if the phantasy is strong enough, we do awful things.  But still the illusions remain in spite of everything, as they did with the old sergeant.  I’ve heard the most painful stories here from men before they died, of women that were false, and injuries done, many, many years ago; and they couldn’t see that it wasn’t real at all, but just phantasy.”

“All the world’s mad,” responded Jasmine wearily, as Al’mah paused.