I hope Jasmine will give you a good dinner." Presently he was gone--in a heavy movement of good-nature and magnanimity.
"Changed--greatly changed, and not for the better," said Ian Stafford to himself.

"This life has told on him.

The bronze of the veld has vanished, and other things are disappearing." At the table with the lights and the flowers and the exquisite appointments, with appetite flattered and tempted by a dinner of rare simplicity and perfect cooking, Jasmine was radiant, amusing, and stimulating in her old way.

She had never seemed to him so much a mistress of delicate satire and allusiveness.

He rose to the combat with an alacrity made more agile by considerable abstinence, for clever women were few, and real talk was the rarest occurrence in his life, save with men in his own profession chiefly.
But later, in her sitting-room, after the coffee had come, there was a change, and the transition was made with much skill and sensitiveness.
Into Jasmine's voice there came another and more reflective note, and the drift of the conversation changed.