Afterwards

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."