For two or three weeks after his meeting with Mrs. Carstairs' brother, Anstice avoided both Cherry Orchard and Greengates.

From a chance word in the village he had learned that Bruce Cheniston was prolonging his visit to his sister; and that new and totally unreasoning jealousy which had assailed Anstice as he saw Cheniston bending over Iris Wayne at the piano told him with a horrid certainty that to the girl herself belonged the responsibility for this change in the young man's plans.

In his calmer moments Anstice could not help admitting the suitability of a friendship, at least, between the two. Although he had lost much of his attractive boyishness Cheniston was a good-looking fellow enough; and there was no denying the fact that he and Miss Wayne were a well-matched pair so far as youth and vitality and general good looks went; and yet Anstice could not visualize the pair together without a fierce, wild pang of jealousy which pierced his heart with an almost intolerable anguish.

For he wanted Iris Wayne for himself. He loved her; and therein lay tragedy; for he told himself miserably that he had no right to ask her to couple her radiant young life with his, already overshadowed by that past happening in India.

Not only that, but he was already over thirty, she but eighteen; and Sir Richard Wayne's daughter was only too well provided with this world's goods, while he, with all his training, all his toil, was even yet a comparatively poor man, with nothing to offer the girl in exchange for the luxurious home from which he would fain take her.

On every count he knew himself to be ineligible; and in the same flash of insight he saw Bruce Cheniston, young, good-looking, distinguished in his profession, in the receipt of a large salary; and owned to himself, with that clarity of vision which rarely failed him, that Cheniston, rather than he, was a fit suitor for Iris Wayne.

On several occasions during those weeks of May he saw the two together; and each time this happened he felt as though the sun had vanished from the sky, as though the soft breezes of early summer were turned to the cold and hopeless blast of an icy north-easter.

Cheniston had a motor-bicycle on which he intended to explore the district; and on finding a kindred spirit in Miss Wayne he had inaugurated a series of expeditions in which she was his companion; while Chloe Carstairs and Cherry would motor forth in the same direction and share a picnic lunch at some wayside hostelry—an arrangement which afforded unbounded pleasure to some members, at least, of the quartette.

That Cheniston was strongly attracted by Iris, Anstice did not doubt. On one unlucky Sunday he had received an invitation from Greengates, which, delivered as it was in person by Sir Richard himself, could not have been refused without discourtesy; and in the middle of the evening Cheniston had dropped in casually with a message from his sister, and had stayed on with an easy certainty of welcome which betokened a rapid growth in favour with both father and daughter.

What Iris' feelings towards the new-comer might be Anstice had no means of discovering. Her manner towards him was delightfully girlish and simple, and it was plain to see that she was fascinated by his accounts of life in the wonderful Egypt which holds always so strong an attraction for the romantic temperament; but with all her young insouciance Iris Wayne was not one to wear her heart upon her sleeve; and her friendliness never lost that touch of reticence, of unconscious dignity which constituted, to Anstice, one of her greatest charms.

Towards himself, as an older man and one whose life naturally ran on contrasting lines, her manner was a little less assured, as though she were not quite certain of her right to treat him as one on a level with herself; but the tinge of girlish deference to which, as he guessed, his profession entitled him in her eyes, was now and then coloured with something else, with a hint of gentleness, not unlike compassion, which was oddly, dangerously sweet to his sore and lonely heart.

Somehow the idea of marriage had never previously entered his head. Before the day which had, so to speak, cut his life in two, with a line of cleavage dividing the careless past from the ever-haunted future, he had been too busy, too much occupied in preparation for the brilliant career which he felt would one day be his, to allow thoughts of marriage to distract him from his chosen work. And since that fatal day, although his old enthusiasm, his old belief in himself and his capabilities, had long ago receded into the dim background, he had never consciously thought of any amelioration of the loneliness, the bitter, regretful solitude in which he now had his being.

Yet the thought of Iris Wayne was oddly, uncomfortably distracting; and in those weeks of May, during which he deliberately denied himself the sight of her, Anstice's face grew haggard, his eyes more sunken beneath their straight black brows.

Yet Fate ordained that he should meet her, more, do her service; and the meeting, with its subsequent conversation, was one which Iris at least was destined never to forget.

One grey and cloudy morning when the sun had forgotten to shine, and the air was warm and moist, Anstice was driving his car along a country road when he espied her sitting by the wayside with a rather woe-begone face.

Her motor-bicycle was beside her and she was engaged in tying a knot, with the fingers of her left hand aided by her teeth, in a roughly-improvised bandage which hid her right wrist.

On seeing his car she looked up; and something in the rather piteous expression of her grey eyes made him slow down beside her.

"What's wrong, Miss Wayne? Had a spill?"

She answered him ruefully.

"Yes. At least my motor skidded and landed me in the road. And I cut my wrist on a sharp stone—look!"

She held up a cruelly-jagged flint; and Anstice sprang out of his car and approached her.

"I say, what a horrid-looking thing! Let me see your wrist, may I? I think you'd better let me bind it up for you."

"Will you?" She held out her wrist obediently, and taking off the handkerchief which bound it he saw that it was really badly cut, the blood still dripping from the wound.

"Ah, quite a nasty gash—it would really do with a stitch or two." He hesitated, looking at her thoughtfully. "Miss Wayne, what's to be done? You can't ride home like that, and yet we can hardly leave your motor-bike on the roadside."

He paused a second, his wits at work. Then his face cleared.

"I know what we'll do," he said. "Round this corner is a cottage where a patient of mine lives. We'll go in there, dispatch her son to look after the bike till I patch you up, and then if you can't manage to ride home we'll think of some other arrangement."

Iris rose, gladly, from her lowly seat.

"That's splendid, Dr. Anstice. I'm sure I can ride home if you will stop this stupid bleeding."

"Good." He liked her pluck. "Jump into my car and we'll go and interview Mrs. Treble."

"What an odd name!"

"Yes, isn't it? And by a strange coincidence her maiden name was Bass!"

Iris laughed, and a little colour came into her pale cheeks as they sped swiftly round the corner in search of the oddly-named lady's abode.

Mrs. Treble, who was engaged in hanging out the weekly washing in the small garden, was all sympathy at the sight of the young lady's wounded wrist, and invited them into the parlour and provided the basin of water and other accessories for which Anstice asked with a cheerful bustle which took no account of any trouble involved.

When she had dispatched her son, an overgrown lad who had just left school, to keep watch over the motor-cycle, Mrs. Treble requested the doctor's leave to continue her work; and nothing loth, Anstice shut the door upon her and gave his attention to his pale patient.

He had brought in a small leather case from his car, and after cleansing the wound he selected a needle and some fine wire in order to put in the necessary stitches, watched the while by a pair of interested, if somewhat apprehensive eyes.

"I won't hurt you, Miss Wayne." Somehow he felt oddly reluctant to inflict even a pinprick of pain on this particular patient. "I'm awfully sorry, but I'm afraid I really must put in a couple of stitches. I'll be as gentle as I can."

Iris laughed, rather shamefacedly.

"You think I am a coward," she said, "and you're quite right. I openly confess I dread bearing pain, probably because I've never known anything worse than toothache in my life!"

"Toothache can be the very—er—deuce," he said. "I once had it myself, and ever since then I've had the liveliest sympathy for any poor victim!"

"But there are so many other pains, so much worse, that it seems absurd to talk of mere toothache as a real pain," she objected, and Anstice laughed.

"Quite so, but you must remember that the other 'real pains' have alleviations which are denied to mere toothache. One's friends do at least take the other things seriously, and offer sympathy as freely as more potent remedies; while the sight of a swollen face is apt to cause one's relations a quite heartless amusement!"

"Well, it must be a consolation to be taken seriously," she said, "and I do think sympathy is wonderfully cheering. Are all doctors as sympathetic as you, Dr. Anstice?"

For a moment Anstice suspected her of mockery. He was well aware that for all his real sympathy with acute suffering he was not remarkable for patience in cases of less reality; and he knew that the people whose ailments belonged to the latter category were apt to find his manner abrupt and unsympathetic.

But a glance at Iris' face showed him she had spoken in good faith; and he answered her in the same spirit.

"There are a good many men in the world who are far more sympathetic with suffering humanity than I, Miss Wayne." For a moment his face clouded, and Iris noticed the change wonderingly. "I'm afraid my manner isn't all it might be. It isn't that I'm not genuinely sorry for people who are, or think themselves, ill; but ..." for a second he hesitated, then a quite unusual impulse drove him into speech, "... the fact is, I once had a knock-down blow myself; and curiously enough it seemed to dull my capacity for entering into the sufferings of others."

She took him up with unexpected comprehension.

"I think I can understand that. It has always seemed to me that it is not the people who have suffered who sympathize ... they understand, if you know what I mean, but they aren't just sorry like the people who haven't had any sorrows of their own to spend their pity on...."

She broke off abruptly, and with equal abruptness Anstice suspended operations to ask, with a solicitude which belied his earlier speech, whether he were hurting her very badly.

"No ... not at all ... at least, hardly at all," she answered honestly. "I was just wishing I could explain myself better. Now take Mrs. Carstairs, for instance." Iris knew that Chloe had told Anstice her story. "She has suffered as very few people like her have to do, but I don't think it has made her exactly what you call sympathetic."

"That is just what I mean," said Anstice. "Somehow I think suffering is apt to destroy one's nerve of sympathy for others. It atrophies, withers away in the blast of one's personal tragedy; and although Mrs. Carstairs might be able to enter into the feelings of another unhappy woman more fully than—well, than you could do, I think you would be more likely to feel what we call 'sorry for' that woman than she would be."

"I'm glad you agree with me," said Iris slowly. "Dr. Anstice, would you think me very—impertinent—if I say I'm sorry you have been—unhappy—too? I—somehow I always thought you"—she stopped, flushed, but continued bravely—"you looked so sad sometimes I used to wonder if you too had suffered, like poor Mrs. Carstairs."

For a moment Anstice's fingers faltered in their task, and the girl's heart missed a beat as she wondered whether she had said too much.

Then:

"Miss Wayne"—Anstice's voice reassured her even while it filled her with a kind of wondering foreboding—"I should never find any impertinence in any interest you might be kind enough to express. I have suffered—bitterly—and the worst of my suffering lies in the fact that others—one other at least besides myself—were involved in the ill I unwittingly wrought."

Again her answer surprised him by the depth of comprehension it conveyed.

"That, too, I can understand," said Iris gently. "I have often tried to imagine how one must feel when one has unknowingly harmed another person; and it has always seemed to me that one would feel as one does when one has spoken unkindly, or impatiently, at least, to a child."

For a second Anstice busied himself in bandaging the slim wrist he held. Then, without looking up, he said:

"You have thought more deeply than many girls of your age, Miss Wayne. I wonder if you would extend your pity to me if you knew the nature of my particular tragedy."

A sudden spatter of rain against the window-pane made them both look up in surprise; and in a lighter tone Anstice said:

"A sharp shower, I see. I've finished my work, you'll be glad to hear, but I think it will be wiser to wait here till the rain's over. Will your cycle take any harm?"

"Oh, no, it can be dried at home," said Iris rather absently; and both of them were too much preoccupied to expend any of their talked-of sympathy on the overgrown youth patiently guarding the motor by the roadside.

"Come and try an easier chair, won't you?" Anstice pushed forward a capacious rocking-chair and Iris took it obediently, while Anstice leaned against the table regarding her rather curiously.

"Miss Wayne." Suddenly he felt a quite overwhelming desire to admit this girl into his jealously-guarded confidence. "From something you said just now I gathered that you had been good enough to spare a thought for me now and then. Does that mean that your kindness would extend so far as to allow you to listen to a very short story in which I, unfortunately, am the principal character?"

"I am ready to listen to anything you care to tell me," she said gently; and looking into her steadfast grey eyes Anstice told himself that a man could desire no sweeter, more trustworthy confidante.

"Well"—he sighed—"here is the story. Once, in India, I found myself in a tight place, with a woman, a girl, who was almost a perfect stranger to me. We had unwittingly trespassed into a native Temple, and the penalty for such trespass was—death."

He paused a second, wondering whether she had heard Bruce Cheniston's story; but although there was deep interest there was no recognition in her quiet attention; and he hurried on.

"She—the girl—made me promise not to allow her to fall into the hands of the natives. Whether she was correct in her fears of what might happen to her I don't know; but I confess I shared them at the time. Anyhow I promised that if help did not come before dawn—we were to die at sunrise—I would shoot her with my own hand."

Again he paused; and the horror in Iris' grey eyes deepened.

"Well, help did come—ten minutes too late. I was standing with my back against the wall, the guns were levelled at my heart, when the rescuers burst into the courtyard and the natives fled. But I had shot the girl ten minutes earlier...."

Anstice's brow was wet with drops of sweat as he finished, his whole being convulsed with reminiscent agony; and he turned aside lest he should read shrinking, or worse, condemnation in the grey eyes which had never left his face.

There was a silence in which to the man who waited the whole world seemed to halt upon its axis, as though aghast at the brief recital which was almost Greek in its sense of inevitable tragedy; and for a wild, hateful moment Anstice told himself that for all her boasted comprehension Iris had not the power to understand the full force of the situation.

Then, suddenly, he found her beside him. She had left her chair, noiselessly, as he turned away, and now she was standing close to him, her hand on his arm, her grey eyes, full of the sweetest, most divine compassion, seeking his ravaged face.

"Oh, you poor thing!" The pity in her voice made it sound like the softest music. "What a dreadfully sad story; and how you must have suffered. But"—her kind little hand tightened on his arm—"why should you reproach yourself so bitterly? You did the only thing it was possible for you to do. No man living could have done anything else."

He turned to her now, and he had recaptured his self-control.

"It is sweet—and kind—of you to say just that." Even now his voice was not quite steady. "And if I could believe it—but all the time I tell myself if I had only waited ... there would perhaps have been a chance ... I was too quick, too ready to obey her request, to carry out my promise...."

"No, Dr. Anstice." In Iris' voice was a womanliness which showed his story had reached the depths of her being. "I'm quite certain that's the wrong way to look at it. As things were, there was nothing else to be done, nothing. If I had been the girl," said Iris quietly, "I should have thought you very cruel if you had broken your promise to me."

"Ah, yes," he said, slowly; "but you see there is another factor in the case which I haven't told you—yet. She was engaged to be married—and by acting prematurely I destroyed the hopes of the man who loved her—whom she loved to the last second of her life."

This time Iris was silent so long that he went on speaking with an attempt at a lighter tone.

"Well, that's the story—and a pretty gloomy one, isn't it? But I have no right to inflict my private sorrows on you, and so——"

She interrupted him as though she had not heard his last words.

"Dr. Anstice, when you realized what had happened, what did you do? I mean, when you came back to England? I suppose you did come back, after that?"

"Yes. I had an interview with the man—the girl's fiancÉ and came home." He shrugged his shoulders, a bitter memory chasing away the softer emotions of the preceding moment. "What did I do? Well, I did what a dozen other fellows might have done in my place. I sought forgetfulness of the past by various means, tried to drown the thought of what had happened in every way I could, and merely succeeded in delivering myself over to a bondage a hundred times more terrible than that from which I was trying to escape."

For the first time Iris looked perplexed.

"I don't think I understand," she said, and again Anstice's face changed.

"No," he said, and his voice was gentle, "of course you don't. And there's no reason why you should. Let us leave the matter at that, Miss Wayne. I am grateful to you for listening so patiently to my story."

"Ah," she said, and her eyes were wistful, "but I should like to know what you meant just now. Won't you tell me? Or do you think I am too stupid to understand?"

"No. But I think you are too young," he said; and the girl coloured.

"Of course if you would rather not——"

Something in her manner made him suddenly change his mind.

"There is no reason why I should make a mystery of it," he said. "I hesitated about telling you because—well, for various reasons; but after all you might as well know the truth. I tried to win forgetfulness by the aid of drugs—morphia, to be exact."

He had startled her now.

"You took morphia——?" Her voice was dismayed.

"Yes, for nearly six months I gave myself up to it. I told myself there was no real danger for me—I knew the peril of it so well. I wasn't like the people who go in ignorantly for the thing; and find themselves bound hand and foot, their lives in ruins round them. That is what I thought, in my folly." He sighed, and his face looked careworn. "Well, I soon found out that I was just like other people after all. I went into the thing, thinking I should find a way out of my troubles. And I was wrong."

"You gave it up?" Her voice was suddenly anxious.

"Yes. In the nick of time I came across an old friend—a friend of my student days, who had been looking for me, unknown to me, for months. He wanted me to do some research work for him—work that necessitated visiting hospitals in Paris and Berlin and Vienna—and I accepted the commission only too gladly."

"And—you gave up the terrible thing?"

"Yes. The new interest saved me, you know. I came back, after some months of hard work, and found my friend on the eve of starting with an expedition for Central Africa, to study tropical diseases; and had there been a place for me I would have gone too. But there wasn't; and I was a bit fagged, so after doing locum work for another friend for some time I looked about for a practice, bought this one—and here I am."

"Dr. Anstice "—she spoke shyly, though her eyes met his bravely—"you won't ever take that dreadful stuff again, will you? I am quite sure," said Iris Wayne, "that that is not the way out."

"No," he answered steadily, "you are quite right. It isn't. But I haven't found the way out yet." He paused a moment; then held out his hand, and she put her uninjured left hand into it rather wonderingly. "Still, I will not seek that way out again. I will promise—no, I won't promise, for I'm only human and I couldn't bear to break a promise to you—but I will do my best to avoid the deadly thing for the rest of my life."

He pressed her hand gently, then dropped it as a sudden loud knock sounded on the door.

"Come in." They turned to see who the visitor might be; and to the surprise of both in walked Bruce Cheniston, an unmistakable frown on his face.

"Hullo! It is you, after all, Iris!" Anstice noted the use of her Christian name, and in the same moment remembered there was a long-standing friendship between the families. "I thought it was your motor-cycle I found by the roadside, with a lanky yokel mounting guard over it; and he said something about an accident——"

"Nothing very serious." Iris smiled at him in friendly fashion, and his face cleared. "I skidded—or the bicycle did—and I fell off and cut my wrist."

"I found Miss Wayne sitting by the roadside binding up her wound," interposed Anstice rather coldly, "and persuaded her to come in here and have it properly seen to. If it had not been for the rain she would have been on her way home by now."

"I see. It was lucky you passed." Evidently Iris' presence prevented any display of hostility. "Well, the rain is over now, but"—he glanced at Iris' bandaged wrist—"you oughtn't to ride home if you're disabled. What do you say, Dr. Anstice?"

"I think, seeing it is the right wrist, it would be neither wise nor easy for Miss Wayne to ride," said Anstice professionally, and Cheniston nodded.

"Well, we will leave the cycle here, and send one of the men for it presently," he said. "Luckily I have got Chloe's car, and I can soon run you over, Iris. I suppose that is your motor outside?" he added, turning to Anstice with sudden briskness.

"Yes." Anstice glanced towards the window. "It is fine now, and I must be off, at any rate."

He packed the things he had used back into their little case, and turned towards the door.

"Good morning, Miss Wayne. I hope your wrist won't give you any further pain."

"Good-bye, Dr. Anstice." She held out her left hand with a smile. "Ever so many thanks. I don't know what I should have done if you had not passed just then!"

The trio went out together, after a word to the mistress of the cottage; and Bruce helped Iris into the car with an air of proprietorship which did not escape the notice of the other man.

"Hadn't you better start first, Dr. Anstice?" Cheniston spoke with cool courtesy. "Your time is more valuable than ours, no doubt!"

"Thanks. Yes, I haven't time to waste." His tone was equally cool. "Good morning, Miss Wayne. 'Morning, Cheniston."

A moment later he had started his engine; and in yet another moment his car was out of sight round the corner of the road.