Afterwards

"Whether it is safer with you. Of course, as a doctor you can get plenty of your own----"

"I shan't be tempted to steal yours for my private use," said Anstice a trifle grimly; and the Fates who rule the lives of men probably smiled to themselves over the fatuity of mankind.

"Well, I gave it to you myself, so you may as well keep it," said Chloe indifferently, as though already tired of the subject; and without more ado Anstice slipped the little white packet into his pocket, and took leave of its former owner before she had opportunity to change her mind on the subject.

He could not dismiss the figure of Chloe Carstairs from his thoughts as he went about his day's work. Intuitively he knew that she was a bitterly unhappy woman, that her life, like his own, had been rent in two by a cataclysm of appalling magnitude, such as visits very few human beings, and he told himself that this woman, too, had been down in the depths even as he had been. And no man, no woman, who has once known the blackness of the abyss, that "outer darkness" in which the soul sits apart in a horror of loneliness, can ever view the world again with quite the clear-eyed vision of the normal human being to whom, fortunately for the sanity of the race, such appalling experiences are mercifully unknown.

On a morning a week later Anstice received a note from Mrs. Carstairs.

"DEAR DR. ANSTICE," "My brother has unexpectedly written to offer himself for a couple of nights, and I shall be pleased if you will come to dinner this evening at half-past seven to meet him. I have invited Miss Wayne, so please complete our quartette if you can."

"Sincerely," "CHLOE CARSTAIRS."

For some moments Anstice sat inwardly debating the question, the note in his hand.

He had no engagement for the evening. The people of Littlefield, puzzled, perhaps a little piqued, by the aloofness of his manner, rarely invited him to their houses in anything but his professional capacity, though they called upon his services in and out of season; and Sir Richard Wayne and Mr. Carey, the gentle, courtly Vicar of the parish, were the only two men with whom he ever enjoyed an hour's quiet chat over a soothing pipe or cigar.

So that there was no reason why he should hesitate to accept Chloe Carstairs' invitation for that particular evening, yet hesitate he did, unaccountably; and when, after fifteen minutes indecision, he suddenly scribbled and dispatched an acceptance, the messenger had barely gone from his presence before he felt an unreasoning impulse to recall the letter.