His eyes beamed protectingly, affectionately, and yet, somehow, a little anxiously, on her “But I must go, Jasmine.  It’s the first time we’ve all been together since the Raid, and it’s good we should be in the full circle once again.  There’s work to do—­more than ever there was.  There’s a storm coming up on the veld, a real jagged lightning business, and men will get hurt, hosts beyond recovery.  We must commune together, all of us.  If there’s the communion of saints, there’s also the communion of sinners.  Fleming is back, and Wolff is back, and Melville and Reuter and Hungerford are back, but only for a few days, and we all must meet and map things out.  I forgot about the dinner.  As soon as I remembered it I left a note on your dressing-table.”

With sudden emotion he drew her to him, and buried his face in her soft golden hair.  “My darling, my little jasmine-flower,” he whispered, softly, “I hate leaving you, but—­”

“But it’s impossible, Ruddy, my man.  How can I send Ian Stafford away?  It’s too late to put him off.”

“There’s no need to put him off or to send him away—­such old friends as you are.  Why shouldn’t he dine with you a deux?  I’m the only person that’s got anything to say about that.”

She expressed no surprise, she really felt none.  He had forgotten that, coming up from Scotland, he had told her of this dinner with his friends, and at the moment she asked Ian Stafford to dine she had forgotten it also; but she remembered it immediately afterwards, and she had said nothing, done nothing.

As Byng spoke, however, a curious expression emerged from the far depths of her eyes—­emerged, and was instantly gone again to the obscurity whence it came.  She had foreseen that he would insist on Stafford dining with her; but, while showing no surprise—­and no perplexity—­there was a touch of demureness in her expression as she answered: 

“I don’t want to seem too conventional, but—­”

“There should be a little latitude in all social rules,” he rejoined.  “What nonsense!  You are prudish, Jasmine.  Allow yourself some latitude.”

“Latitude, not license,” she returned.  Having deftly laid on him the responsibility for this evening’s episode, this excursion into the dangerous fields of past memory and sentiment and perjured faith, she closed the book of her own debit and credit with a smile of satisfaction.

“Let me look at you,” he said, standing her off from him.

Holding her hand, he turned her round like a child to be inspected.  “Well, you’re a dream,” he added, as she released herself and swept into a curtsey, coquetting with her eyes as she did so.  “You’re wonderful in blue—­a flower in the azure,” he added.  “I seem to remember that gown before—­years ago—­”

She uttered an exclamation of horror.  “Good gracious, you wild and ruthless ruffian!  A gown—­this gown—­years ago!  My bonny boy, do you think I wear my gowns for years?”