There was only the look she had seen the day he first visited her in her own home, when he had played with words she had used in the way she adored, and would adore till she died; when he had said, in reply to her remark that he would turn her head, that it wouldn’t make any difference to his point of view if she did turn her head!  Suddenly it was all as if that day had come back, although his then giant physical strength had gone; although he had been mangled in the power-house of which they had spoken that day.  Come to think of it, she too had been working in the “power-house” and had been mangled also; for she was but a thread of what she was then, but a wisp of golden straw to the sheaf of the then young golden wheat.

All at once, in answer to the humour in his eyes, to the playful bright look, the tragedy and the passion which had flown out from her old self like the flame that flares out of an opened furnace-door, sank back again, the door closed, and all her senses were cooled as by a gentle wind.

Her eyes met his, and the invitation in them was like the call of the thirsty harvester in the sunburnt field.  With an abandon, as startling as it was real and true to her nature, she sank down to the floor and buried her face in her hands at his feet.  She sobbed deeply, softly.

With an exclamation of gladness and welcome he bent over her and drew her close to him, and his hands soothed her trembling shoulders.

“Peace is the best thing of all, Jasmine,” he whispered.  “Peace.”

They were the last words that Ian had addressed to her.  It did not make her shrink now that both had said to her the same thing, for both knew her, each in his own way, better than she had ever known herself; and each had taught her in his own way, but by what different means!

All at once, with a start, she caught Rudyard’s arm with a little spasmodic grasp.

“I did not kill Adrian Fellowes,” she said, like a child eager to be absolved from a false imputation.  She looked up at him simply, bravely.

“Neither did I,” he answered gravely, and the look in his eyes did not change.  She noted that.

“I know.  It was—­”

She paused.  What right had she to tell!

“Yes, we both know who did it,” he added.  “Al’mah told me.”

She hid her head in her hands again, while he hung over her wisely waiting and watching.

Presently she raised her head, but her swimming eyes did not seek his.  They did not get so high.  After one swift glance towards his own, they dropped to where his heart might be, and her voice trembled as she said: 

“Long ago Alice Tynemouth said I ought to marry a man who would master me.  She said I needed a heavy hand over me—­and the shackles on my wrists.”

She had forgotten that these phrases were her own; that she had used them concerning herself the night before the tragedy.

“I think she was right,” she added.  “I had never been mastered, and I was all childish wilfulness and vanity.  I was never worth while.  You took me too seriously, and vanity did the rest.”