“No; I was thinking of other things.  But I wanted—­I want to see him.  When will he be back?”

“At any moment, I should think.  But, Al’mah, no matter what you feel about me, you must keep your engagement to sing here.  The people in there, a hundred of the best people of the county—­”

“The best people of the county—­such abject snobbery!” she retorted, sharply.  “Do you think that would influence me?  You ought to know me well enough—­but that’s just it, you do not know me.  I realize it at last.  Listen now.  I will not sing to-night, and you will go and tell Mrs. Byng so.”

Once again she turned away, but her exit was arrested by another voice, a pleasant voice, which said: 

“But just one minute, please.  Mr. Fellowes is quite right....  Fellowes, won’t you go and say that Madame Al’mah will be there in five minutes?”

It was Ian Stafford.  He had come at Jasmine’s request to bring Al’mah, and he had overheard her last words.  He saw that there had been a scene, and conceived that it was the kind of quarrel which could be better arranged by a third disinterested person.

After a moment’s hesitation, with an anxious yet hopeful look, Fellowes disappeared, Al’mah’s brown eyes following him with dark inquisition.  Presently she looked at Ian Stafford with a flash of malice.  Did this elegant and diplomatic person think that all he had to do was to speak, and she would succumb to his blandishment?  He should see.

He smiled, and courteously motioned her to a chair.

“You said to Mr. Fellowes that I should sing in five minutes,” she remarked maliciously and stubbornly, but she moved forward to the chair, nevertheless.

“Yes, but there is no reason why we should not sit for three out of the five minutes.  Energy should be conserved in a tiring world.”

“I have some energy to spare—­the overflow,” she returned with a protesting flash of the eyes, as, however, she slowly seated herself.

“We call it power and magnetism in your case,” he answered in that low, soothing voice which had helped to quiet storms in more than one chancellerie of Europe. . . .  “What are you going to sing to-night?” he added.

“I am not going to sing,” she answered, nervously.  “You heard what I said to Mr. Fellowes.”

“I was an unwilling eavesdropper; I heard your last words.  But surely you would not be so unoriginal, so cliche, as to say the same thing to me that you said to Mr. Fellowes!”

His smile was winning and his humour came from a deep well.  On the instant she knew it to be real, and his easy confidence, his assumption of dominancy had its advantage.

“I’ll say it in a different way to you, but it will be the same thing.  I shall not sing to-night,” she retorted, obstinately.

“Then a hundred people will go hungry to bed,” he rejoined.  “Hunger is a dreadful thing—­and there are only three minutes left out of the five,” he added, looking at his watch.