“Where is he?  In the hospital?” Stafford asked.

“It was just beside our own ’ome it ’appened.  We got two rooms now, Jigger and me.  ’E was took in there.  The doctor come, but ’e says it ain’t no use.  ’E didn’t seem to care much, and ’e didn’t give no ’ope, not even when I said I’d give him all me wages for a year.”

Jasmine was beside her now, wiping her tears and holding her hand, her impulsive nature stirred, her heart throbbing with desire to help.  Suddenly she remembered what Rudyard had said up-stairs three hours ago, that there wasn’t a single person in the world to whom they had done an act which was truly and purely personal during the past three years:  and she had a tremulous desire to help this crude, mothering, passionately pitiful girl.

“What will you do?” Jasmine said to Stafford.

“I will go at once.  Tell my servant to have up a cab,” he said to Krool, who stood outside the door.

“Truly, ’e will be glad,” the girl exclaimed. “’E told me about the suvring, and Sunday-week for brekfis,” she murmured.  “You’ll never miss the time, y’r gryce.  Gawd knows you’ll not miss it—­an’ ’e ain’t got much left.”

“I will go, too—­if you will let me,” said Jasmine to Stafford.  “You must let me go.  I want to help—­so much.”

“No, you must not come,” he replied.  “I will pick up a surgeon in Harley Street, and we’ll see if it is as hopeless as she says.  But you must not come to-night.  To-morrow, certainly, to-morrow, if you will.  Perhaps you can do some good then.  I will let you know.”

He held out his hand to say good-bye, as the girl passed out with Jasmine’s kiss on her cheek and a comforting assurance of help.

Jasmine did not press her request.  First there was the fact that Rudyard did not know, and might strongly disapprove; and secondly, somehow, she had got nearer to Stafford in the last few minutes than in all the previous hours since they had met again.  Nowhere, by all her art, had she herself touched him, or opened up in his nature one tiny stream of feeling; but this girl’s story and this piteous incident had softened him, had broken down the barriers which had checked and baffled her.  There was something almost gentle in his smile as he said good-bye, and she thought she detected warmth in the clasp of his hand.

Left alone, she sat in the silence, pondering as she had not pondered in the past three years.  These few days in town, out of the season, were sandwiched between social functions from which their lives were never free.  They had ever passed from event to event like minor royalties with endless little ceremonies and hospitalities; and there had been so little time to meditate—­had there even been the wish?