As a rule the psychological moments of life come and go so quietly that their passing attracts little notice. Quite minor happenings give rise to demonstrations of excitement, of joy, of loudly voiced approbation or disappointment. But the moments which really matter in a life, which mark an epoch or destroy a dream, pass as a rule so quietly that only those whose dreams are shattered, or whose lives have been touched with the glory of the immortal, know that for a brief instant Time has become interchangeable with Eternity; that in the space of sixty fleeting seconds whole cycles of life have been lived through, and a vast and yawning gulf, in thought, in feeling, in spiritual growth or mental outlook, has opened to divide this moment from the one which directly preceded it.

Such a moment was this one in which the two men who were bound together by so tragic a link came face to face in Chloe Carstairs' drawing-room.

Each had been quite sincere in his dread of any future meeting; but whereas Bruce Cheniston had been the victim of as cruel a circumstance as ever deprived lover of his beloved, Anstice was the more to be pitied, inasmuch as to his own burden of regret must be added the knowledge that through his premature action he had given another man the right to execrate his name so long as they both should live.

For a second Anstice wondered, growing cold whether Cheniston would refuse to shake hands with him. In his heart he knew quite well, had always known, that he had not been to blame in that bygone episode; that although he had done a thing which must haunt him for the rest of his life by reason of its tragic uselessness, as a man in whom a woman had trusted he had had no alternative but to act as he had acted.

Yet of all men on earth Cheniston might well question the necessity of his action; and Anstice told himself with a fast-beating heart that he would have no right to resentment should the other refuse to take his hand, to sit at meat with the man who had deprived Hilda Ryder of her share in the gracious inheritance of life in the world she had called so beautiful.

For a second, indeed, Cheniston himself hesitated, checked in the friendly greeting he had been about to bestow on his sister's visitor. He had arrived late that evening, and had been dismissed to dress with the hasty information that two guests were expected to dinner, but he had had no idea of the last arrival's identity; and to him, too, the meeting brought back with horrible poignancy that last bitter interview in the haunted East.

Then, for Bruce Cheniston was sufficiently just to acquit Anstice of any share in this untoward situation, he held out his hand with a cold courtesy which plainly betokened no intention of alluding to any former meeting.

"Good evening." Their hands touched, then fell apart. "You are a new-comer to Littlefield, I understand. Like the place?"

"Yes—in moderation," rejoined Anstice with equally frigid courtesy. "The country has its charms—at this season of the year."

"It has charms at all seasons, Dr. Anstice." Iris' light voice challenged him, even while her grey eyes noted the strange expression in his face. "I'm afraid you're not a real country lover if you qualify your affection by picking out a particular season!"

"You remind one of those people who love dogs—'in their proper place.'" Chloe's tone was delicately quizzical. "On inquiry you find their proper place is outside—in some kennel or inclosure as far away from the speaker as it is possible to get!"

"You can't be charged with that particular kind of affection, Chloe." There was an assertive note in Cheniston's voice when he spoke to his sister which was new to her. "You think a dog's proper place is the best armchair or the downiest bed in the house!"

For a second Chloe did not reply; and without waiting Bruce went on speaking.

"By the way, where are your dogs? I've not seen hide or hair of one since I arrived."

Again there was a short, but quite perceptible silence. Then Chloe said tranquilly:

"No wonder you haven't seen any dogs, Bruce. There aren't any to see."

"No dogs?" Bruce was frankly astonished. "Why, in the old days you used to declare you couldn't live without them!"

Just for a second a quiver of emotion convulsed Chloe's usually impassive face. Then she laughed, and Anstice thought her laugh almost painful in its artificiality.

"My dear Bruce," she said, "please remember the old days are as dead as—as Queen Anne. When I was young enough and foolish enough to believe in disinterested affection, and in the right of every creature to be happy, I adored dogs—or thought I did. Now I am wiser, and know that life is not all bones and playtime, so to speak. Besides, they always die when one is fond of them, and I quite agree with Kipling that with so much unavoidable discomfort to put up with, it's the height of folly to 'give one's heart to a dog to tear.' In future I yield no fraction of my heart to any living creature—not even a dog."

Certainly Chloe's drawing-room was a battlefield of conflicting emotions this evening. Just for a moment she had been shaken out of her usual poise, had spoken warmly, as a normal woman might have done; yet both Iris who loved her, and Anstice who had studied her, knew that this warmer manner, this apparent freedom of speech, was in reality the outward sign of some inward disturbance; and both guessed, vaguely, that the meeting with her brother, who had not been in England for several years, was the cause of her unusual animation.

Fortunately as she finished speaking the gong which summoned them to dinner began to sound; and a moment later Bruce offered his arm to Iris and led her into the dining-room, followed by Anstice and his hostess.

Not appearing to notice his proffered arm, Chloe walked beside him in a sudden pensive silence which Anstice found oddly appealing after her impetuous speech; and for a moment he forgot his own equivocal position in a desire to help her through what he guessed to be a trying moment.

Once seated at the pretty round table things became easier. The room was softly lit by innumerable candles—a fancy of Chloe's—and in their tender light both women looked their best. As usual Mrs. Carstairs wore white, the fittest setting, Anstice thought, for her pale and tragic grace; but to-night she had thrown a wonderful Chinese scarf round her shoulders, and the deep blue ground, embroidered with black and green birds and flowers, gave an unusually distinctive note to her elusive personality. Opposite to her Iris, in her filmy grey-green frock, a big bunch of violets at her breast, wore the look of a nymph, some woodland creature whose fragrant charm and youthful freshness were in striking contrast to Chloe's more finished beauty.

The conversation, once started, ran easily enough. Although he never mentioned India, Cheniston was ready enough to talk of Egypt, where for some years he had made his home; and Iris, to whose young imagination the very name of that mysterious land was a charm, listened entranced to his description of a trip he had lately taken up the Nile.

"You are an engineer, Mr. Cheniston?" Anstice interpolated a polite question and Cheniston answered in the same tone.

"Yes. And engineering in the land of the Pharaohs is no joke. You must remember that we, as engineers, are only now where they were thousands of years ago. I mean that our present-day feats, the Dam at Assouan, wonderful as it is, and the rest, are mere child's play compared with the marvels they constructed in their day."

"So I have been told before." Only Anstice knew how hard it was to sit there conversing as though he and this man shared no tragic memory in common. "But if Egyptologists are to be believed there is hardly any invention, any scientific discovery—so called—which wasn't known to the Egyptians many thousands of years before the birth of Christ."

"They even possessed aeroplanes, didn't they?" asked Iris, smiling; and Bruce Cheniston turned to her with an involuntary softening in his rather harsh voice.

"So it is stated, I believe," he said, with an answering smile. "And it is generally believed that in the lost Continent of Atlantis——"

He went on talking, not monopolizing the conversation, but keeping it going so skilfully that Iris, at least, did not recognize the fact that both Mrs. Carstairs and Anstice were more than ordinarily silent as the meal progressed.

When the short but perfect dinner was finished Chloe rose.

"We will have coffee in the drawing-room, Bruce," she said as she moved slowly to the door. "If you are not too long over your cigarettes I daresay Miss Wayne will sing for us."

"With that inducement we shall soon follow you," said Cheniston gravely; and as Iris passed through the door which Anstice held open for her she gave him a friendly little smile which somehow nerved him for the ordeal which he foresaw to be at hand.

Closing the door he came back again to the table, but did not yet sit down. Bruce had already reseated himself and was pouring out a glass of port, an operation he interrupted with a perfunctory apology.

"Forgive me—pray help yourself." He pushed the decanter across the table, but Anstice shook his head.

"No, thanks." He hesitated a moment, then plunged into the subject which must surely be uppermost in both their minds. "See here, Cheniston, I should like you to understand that when I accepted Mrs. Carstairs' kind hospitality to-night I had no idea you were the brother I was to meet."

For a second Cheniston said nothing, his brown hand playing absently with a pair of nutcrackers beside him. Then he raised his head and looked Anstice squarely in the face.

"I am quite ready to believe that," he said slowly. "I can hardly conceive any circumstances in which you would care to run the risk of a meeting with me."

"Quite so." Something in Cheniston's manner made Anstice suddenly angry. "Though I would ask you, in common fairness, to believe that my distaste for such a meeting rises rather from my reluctance to remind you of the past than from any acknowledgment that you have a right to resent my presence."

Again Bruce Cheniston looked him in the face; and this time there was a genuine surprise in his blue eyes.

"I don't think I have given you reason to suppose I resent meeting you," he said with a new note in his voice, a note of something more definitely like hostility than he had hitherto permitted himself to show. "Since you have started the subject I may say that as a rule one doesn't greet as a brother the man who has robbed one of one's most treasured possession—I'm speaking metaphorically, of course—but I think you can hardly find fault with my—hesitation just now."

"Oh, you have been politeness itself," said Anstice, rather bitterly. "And in return for your forbearance I will relieve you of my unwelcome presence immediately. Luckily my profession makes it easy for me to behave with what, in another man, would appear discourtesy."

He turned towards the door; but Bruce's voice arrested him midway.

"One moment, Dr. Anstice." His tone was less openly hostile. "Don't go yet, please. There are still one or two things to be said between us. Will you do me the favour of sitting down again and letting us talk a little?"

"I don't see what good will come of it, but I'll stay if you wish." Anstice returned to the table, and drawing out a chair—the one which Iris had occupied during the meal—he sat down and lighted a cigarette with a slightly defiant air.

"To begin with"—Cheniston spoke abruptly—"I gather you know my sister's story—know the bitter injustice that has been done to her in this damned place?"

Rather taken aback Anstice hesitated before replying, and Cheniston continued without waiting for him to speak:

"I say you know it, because my sister has a code of honour which forbids her welcoming to her house anyone who is ignorant of that horrible chapter in her history. And since I find you here, not only as a doctor, but as a friend, I gather you believe she was innocent of the charge against her."

"Most certainly I believe in Mrs. Carstairs' innocence." He spoke warmly now.

"For that, at least, I am grateful to you." His tone did not betray overwhelming gratitude, yet Anstice felt a sudden lightening of his spirit. "To me, of course, it is absolutely inconceivable how anyone could believe my sister guilty of such a degrading crime—or series of crimes—but doubtless I am biassed in her favour. Still, you are a new acquaintance, and don't know her as I do; so that I am grateful to you for your clear-sightedness in the matter."

He broke off for a moment to drink some wine. Then:

"I should like to ask you one question. Does my sister know of that episode in India? I mean, of course, of your share in the affair?"

"No. And," said Anstice, "it has been puzzling me for the last couple of hours to understand how it is that she has not connected my name with you. Didn't she know it at the time?"

"I daresay. But you must remember that my sister has gone through a great deal since that day, three years ago. Very soon after that she became involved in that terrible chain of events which led to her public humiliation; and I haven't a shadow of doubt that the names of the actors in the tragedy which broke up my life vanished completely from her memory. As you may have noticed, Chloe is a self-centred woman. Her sympathies are not deep, nor her interests wide. Her own life is a good deal more interesting to her than the lives of other people—it is generally so with strong characters, I believe—and after all, her own tragedy has been so appalling that she may be excused if she has not a very keen curiosity for those of others."

"I quite agree with you. But"—it was Anstice's turn to look Cheniston fully in the face—"do I understand you wish me to tell your sister of our former—acquaintance?"

After his question there fell a silence, during which Anstice had time to study the other man more fully than he had hitherto done.

Like himself, Cheniston had altered since that day in India. Although still sunburned and florid, a typical young Englishman in his square-shouldered build and general air of clean fitness, there was something in his face which had not been there before, which warred oddly with the youth which still lurked in the blue eyes and round the clean-shaven mouth. The boyishness had vanished from his features, taking with it all hint of softness; and in its place was a hard, assertive look, the look of one who, having been once worsted in a bout with Fate, through no fault of his own, was determined for the future to keep a sharp lookout for his own interests and well-being.

That it was a stronger face there was no denying, but it was also a far less attractive one than that which Bruce Cheniston, the boy, had presented to the world.

At another moment Anstice would have found occasion for interested speculation in the question as to whether or no this new man were the real Bruce Cheniston—the Cheniston who would eventually have come to the surface no matter how his life had been ordained; and as a psychologist he would have found pleasure in debating the subject in all its aspects. But as things were he was too miserably conscious that to him, indirectly, this change from boy to man was due to take any interest in the subtler question as to whether, after all, the alteration was only the logical outcome of the man's true character, uninfluenced by external happenings.

"No." Cheniston spoke so suddenly that Anstice started. "On the whole I see no reason why my sister need be told the truth. Of course, one day the similarity of name may flash upon her, and then, naturally, she must be told."

"Quite so." Anstice played with an empty glass for a moment. "As a matter of fact I should really prefer Mrs. Carstairs to know the truth. Of course the decision rests with you; but if you see your way to telling her the story, pray don't be held back from doing so by any scruples on my account. Besides——"

Suddenly, so suddenly that he broke off involuntarily in his sentence, the notes of the piano rang out from the room across the hall, and without thinking what he did he rose hastily to his feet.

"Miss Wayne is going to sing." Cheniston followed his lead politely. "Shall we go and listen to the concert, Anstice?"

"As you like. Forgive my abruptness, Cheniston." He had realized he had acted unconventionally. "Miss Wayne's singing is a treat one doesn't want to lose."

With a queer little smile Cheniston led the way across the hall, and they entered the drawing-room, Iris bringing her prelude to a close as the door opened to admit them.

"Come and sit down, Dr. Anstice." Chloe indicated a deep chair beside the piano, and nothing loth, Anstice sat down as directed, while Cheniston, his face a little in shadow, stood by one of the widely-opened casements, through which the scents of the sleeping garden stole softly, like a benison from the heart of the pitiful earth.

A moment later Iris began to sing, and once again her rich, soft tones seemed to cast a spell over Anstice's troubled, bitter spirit.

From his low seat he had an unimpeded view of the singer. Her profile, shaded by her soft, fair hair, looked unusually pure and delicate in the candlelight, and as she sang the rise and fall of her breast in its fold of filmy chiffon, the motion of her hands over the ivory keys, the sweet seriousness of her expression, gave her an appearance of radiant, tender youth which held an appeal as potent as it was unconscious.

When she had finished her song, the last notes dying away into silence, Cheniston came forward quickly.

"Miss Wayne, you sing beautifully. May we ask for another song? You're not tired, are you?"

He bent over her as he spoke, and something in his manner, something subtly protective, made Anstice's heart beat with a sudden fierce jealousy which he knew to be quite unjustifiable.

"No, I'm not in the least tired." Iris lifted her grey eyes frankly to Cheniston's face, and again Anstice, watching, felt a pang of whose nature he could have no doubt. He rose from his chair, with a half-formed intention of adding his entreaties to those of Cheniston, but sank back again as he realized the favour was already won.

"I will sing with pleasure." Iris turned on the music-stool to glance at her hostess, and Anstice saw her face, pearly and luminous in the soft candlelight. "Mrs. Carstairs, you like Dvorak. Shall I sing you one of his gipsy songs?"

"Please, Iris." Few words of endearment ever passed between the two, yet each felt something like real affection for the other, and Chloe's deep voice was always gentle when she spoke to Iris.

The next moment Cheniston stepped back and took up his former position on the far side of the piano; and Iris began the simple little melody which Dvorak acquired from the gipsies of his native land.

So far Anstice heard the pure, soft voice; and suddenly he felt a half-shy, half-reverential wonder as to what manner of woman she had been who had brought this adorable girl into the world. Surely Fate had been cruel to this unknown woman, inasmuch as Death had been permitted to snatch her away before her eyes had been gladdened by the vision of her child grown into this priceless, this wonderful youth, which held a hint of a yet more gracious, yet more desirable womanhood....

And then the second verse stole softly on the quiet air....

Again did one, at least, of Iris' hearers lose the remaining lines. For to Anstice these words brought another vision—a vision in which Iris, this fair-haired girl who looked so adorably young and sweet, bent over a little child whose rose-leaf face was a baby replica of her own....

And suddenly Anstice knew, knew irrevocably, beyond shadow of doubt, that he wanted Iris Wayne for himself, that she was the one woman in all the world he desired to make his wife....

With a wild throb of his heart he looked up—to find Bruce Cheniston's eyes fixed upon his face with a half-mocking smile in their blue depths, of whose hostile meaning there could be no question.

An hour or so later, when the guests had departed, and Cheniston had finished a solitary pipe downstairs, he went up, yawning, to bed. Passing his sister's open door he heard her call him, and after a second's indecision he answered the summons, wondering why she were not already asleep.

Chloe was sitting by the open window, wearing a thin grey wrapper which made her look curiously pale and ethereal. Her thick hair hung in two heavy plaits over her shoulders, and in the dim light her face showed indistinctly in its silky black frame.

"Chloe, why aren't you in bed?" Bruce paused half-way across the room.

"I'm not sleepy," she said indifferently. "I often sit here half the night. Bruce"—her voice grew more alert—"have you and Dr. Anstice met before?"

"Yes," he said, "we have. But why do you ask?"

"I thought there was something rather curious about your meeting," she answered slowly. "At first I could not understand it, and then it dawned upon me that you had met—and distrusted one another—before."

"Distrusted?" He stared at her. "That isn't the right word, Chloe. We have met before—in India. I almost wonder you yourself didn't realize that fact, but I suppose you were not sufficiently interested——"

She interrupted him without ceremony.

"I? But how should I realize ... unless"—suddenly her intuition serving her as it serves so many women, she grasped the truth with a quickness which surprised even her brother—"was that the name of the man who—you don't mean it was Dr. Anstice who ... who...."

He nodded.

"Yes. I see you've grasped the truth. Anstice is an uncommon name, and I'm surprised you did not recognize it earlier."

"I had forgotten it." She stared at him, her blue eyes narrowing as her mind worked quickly. "I see now. Dr. Anstice is the man——"

"Who shot Hilda Ryder." Cheniston finished her sentence for her calmly, but she saw him whiten beneath his tan. "Yes. He is the man all right. We met, once, in Bombay—afterwards. And now you know why our meeting to-night was not calculated to give either of us any great pleasure."

"Yes. I know now." She spoke slowly, almost meditatively. "And I know, too, why he always looks so sad. Bruce, from the bottom of my heart I pity that man."

"You do?" Bruce's eyebrows rose. "I confess I don't see why you should waste your pity on him. I think you might bestow a little more of it on me—though it is rather late for pity now."

"On you?" Slowly her blue gaze rested on his face. "Bruce, you don't compare your position with his? Surely even you can understand that he is a thousand times more to be pitied than you? I always thought there was a tragedy in Dr. Anstice's life. But I never dreamed it was quite so piteous as this."

Bruce uttered an exclamation of impatience.

"I didn't expect such sentimentality from you, Chloe. I gathered from your conversation before dinner that you were pretty well disillusioned by this time, and it rather surprises me to hear you pouring out your compassion on a man like Anstice, who certainly doesn't strike me as requiring any outside sympathy."

For a moment there was silence, while Chloe played absently with a bracelet she had just discarded. Then she said tranquilly:

"You never were overburdened with brains, Bruce, though I grant you do well in your own profession. But, if you fail to see the reason why Dr. Anstice is deserving of more compassion than you I'm afraid it's hopeless to expect anything very brilliant from you in the future."

Cheniston's eyes darkened and his jaw set itself aggressively. For a moment his sister found him an unfamiliar personality, and in her own indifferent way asked herself whether after all she had ever known her brother thoroughly.

Then as she was considering the problem, and finding it mildly attractive, Bruce turned on his heel and strode sulkily to the door.

"Good night," he said angrily as he reached it. "You're in one of your aggravating moods to-night, and it's no use me staying to talk to you."

"Not a bit of use," she assented serenely; and her brother went out, nearly falling over Tochatti, who was evidently about to seek admission to her mistress's room.

"Why on earth aren't you in bed, Tochatti?" His inward annoyance made him speak harshly; but Tochatti apparently bore no resentment.

She murmured something to which he paid scant attention; and then, standing aside for him to pass her, she quietly entered the room he had just quitted, and proceeded with her final duties for the night.