but lies, about himself, about everything.  When he had said enough,—­lying was easier to him than anything else—­I told him the truth.  Then he went wild.  He caught hold of me as if to strangle me....  He did not realize the needlepoint when it caught him.  If he did, it must have seemed to him only the prick of a pin....  But in a few minutes it was all over.  He died quite peacefully.  But it was not very easy getting him on the sofa.  He looked sleeping as he lay there.  You saw.  He would never lie any more to women, to you or to me or any other.  It is a good thing to stop a plague, and the simplest way is the best.  He was handsome, and his music was very deceiving.  It was almost good of its kind, and it was part of him.  When I look back I find only misery.  Two wicked men hurt me.  They spoiled my life, first one and then another; and I went from bad to worse.  At least he”—­she pointed to the other room—­“he had some courage at the very last.  He fought, he braved death.  The other—­you remember the Glencader Mine.  Your husband and Ian Stafford went down, and Lord Tynemouth was ready to go, but Adrian would not go.  Then it was I began to hate him.  That was the beginning.  What happened had to be.  I was to kill him; and I did.  It avenged me, and it avenged your husband.  I was glad of that, for Rudyard Byng had done so much for me:  not alone that he saved me at the opera, you remember, but other good things.  I did his work for him with Adrian.”

“Have you no fear—­of me?” Jasmine asked.

“Fear of—­you?  Why?”

“I might hate you—­I might tell.”

Al’mah made a swift gesture of protest.  “Do not say foolish things.  You would rather die than tell.  You should be grateful to me.  Some one had to kill him.  There was Rudyard Byng, Ian Stafford, or yourself.  It fell to me.  I did your work.  You will not tell; but it would not matter if you did.  Nothing would happen—­nothing at all.  Think it out, and you will see why.”

Jasmine shuddered violently.  Her body was as cold as ice.

“Yes, I know.  What are you going to do after the war?”

“Back to Covent Garden perhaps; or perhaps there will be no ’after the war.’  It may all end here.  Who knows—­who cares!”

Jasmine came close to her.  For an instant a flood of revulsion had overpowered her; but now it was all gone.

“We pay for all the wrong we do.  We pay for all the good we get”—­once Ian Stafford had said that, and it rang in her ears now.  Al’mah would pay, and would pay here—­here in this world.  Meanwhile, Al’mah was a woman who, like herself, had suffered.

“Let me be your friend; let me help you,” Jasmine said, and she took both of Almah’s hands in her own.

Somehow Jasmine’s own heart had grown larger, fuller, and kinder all at once.  Until lately she had never ached to help the world or any human being in all her life; there had never been any of the divine pity which finds its employ in sacrifice.  She had been kind, she had been generous, she had in the past few months given service unstinted; but it was more as her own cure for her own ills than yearning compassion for all those who were distressed “in mind, body, or estate.”