She really wanted--her idealistic self wanted--to be all that she knew she looked, a flower in life and thought.

But, oh, it was hard, hard for her to be what she wished! Why should it be so hard for her?
She was roused by a voice.

"Cronje!" it said in a deep, slow, ragged note.
Byng's half-caste valet, Krool, sombre of face, small, lean, ominous, was standing in the doorway.
"Cronje! ...

Well ?" rejoined Byng, quietly, yet with a kind of smother in the tone.
Krool stretched out a long, skinny, open hand, and slowly closed the fingers up tight with a gesture suggestive of a trap closing upon a crushed captive.
"Where ?" Byng asked, huskily.
"Doornkop," was the reply; and Jasmine, watching closely, fascinated by Krool's taciturnity, revolted by his immobile face, thought she saw in his eyes a glint of malicious and furtive joy.

A dark premonition suddenly flashed into her mind that this creature would one day, somehow, do her harm; that he was her foe, her primal foe, without present or past cause for which she was responsible; but still a foe--one of those antipathies foreordained, one of those evil influences which exist somewhere in the universe against every individual life.
"Doornkop--what did I say!" Byng exclaimed to Jasmine.