obsession of self, he was eager to be done with it all, to pay a price which he might have paid, had it been possible to meet Rudyard pistol or sword in hand, and die as many such a man has done, without trying to save his own life or to take the life of another.  That he could not do.  Rudyard did not know the truth, had not the faintest knowledge that Jasmine had been more to himself than an old and dear friend.  To pay the price in any other way than by eliminating himself from the equation was to smirch her name, be the ruin of a home, and destroy all hope for the future.

It had seemed to him that there was no other way than to disappear honourably through one of the hundred gates which the war would open to him—­to go where Death ambushed the reckless or the brave, and take the stroke meant for him, on a field of honour all too kind to himself and soothing to those good friends who would mourn his going, those who hoped for him the now unattainable things.

In a spirit of stoic despair he had come to the seat of war.  He had invited Destiny to sweep him up in her reaping, by placing himself in the ambit of her scythe; but the sharp reaping-hook had passed him by.

The innumerable exits were there in the wall of life and none had opened to him; but since the evening when he saw Jasmine at the railway station, there had been an opening of doors in his soul hitherto hidden.  Beyond these doors he saw glimpses of a new world—­not like the one he had lived in, not so green, so various, or tumultuous, but it had the lure of that peace, not sterile or somnolent, which summons the burdened life, or the soul with a vocation, to the hood of a monk—­a busy self-forgetfulness.

Looking after Barry Whalen’s retreating figure he saw this new, grave world opening out before him; and as the vision floated before his eyes, Barry’s appeal that he should visit Jasmine at the hospital came to him.

Jasmine suffered.  He recalled Barry’s words:  “She’s as thin as she once wasn’t, but twice as beautiful.  Her eyes are as big as stars, and she can smile still, but it’s a new one—­a war-smile, I expect.  Everything gets a turn of its own at the Front.”

Jasmine suffered in body.  He knew that she suffered in mind also.  To go to her?  Was that his duty?  Was it his desire?  Did his heart cry out for it either in pity—­or in love?

In love?  Slowly a warm flood of feeling passed through him.  It was dimly borne in on him, as he gazed at the hospital in the distance, that this thing called Love, which seizes upon our innermost selves, which takes up residence in the inner sanctuary, may not be dislodged.  It stays on when the darkness comes, reigning in the gloom.  Even betrayal, injury, tyranny, do not drive it forth.  It continues.  No longer is the curtain drawn aside for tribute, for appeal, or for adoration, but It remains until the last footfall dies in the temple, and the portals ate closed forever.