Afterwards

"Don't you?" Anstice leaned against the trunk of the big cedar under which she sat, and apparently forgot the need for haste. "To tell you the truth I sometimes wonder to find myself here. When I was younger, you know, I never intended to go in for general practice. I had dreams, wild dreams of specializing. I was ambitious, and intended making some marvellous discovery which should revolutionize medical science...."

He broke off abruptly, and when he spoke again his voice held the old bitter note which she had not heard of late.

"Well, that's all over. I lost ambition when I lost everything else, and now I suppose I shall go on to the end of the chapter as a general practitioner, attending old women in stuffy cottages, and children with measles and whooping-cough!"

He laughed; but Iris' face was grave.

"But, Dr. Anstice"--she spoke rather slowly--"isn't it possible for you to go back to those dreams and ambitions? Suppose you were to start again--to try once more to make the discovery you speak of. Mightn't it ..." her voice faltered a moment, but her grey eyes were steady, "... mightn't that be the way out--for you?"

There was a sudden silence, broken only by the cooing of a wood-pigeon in a tall tree close at hand. Then Anstice said thoughtfully: "I wonder? Supposing that were the way out, after all?"

Ha gazed at her with a long and steady gaze which was yet oddly impersonal, and she met his eyes bravely, though the carnation flush deepened in her cheeks. Just as she opened her lips to reply a new voice broke upon their ears.

"Good afternoon, Iris. Am I too late for a game of tennis?"

Bruce Cheniston, racquet in hand, had come round the corner of the shrubbery, and as she heard his voice Iris turned to him swiftly.

"Oh, good afternoon! You are late, aren't you? We waited for you ever so long, then as you did not come Dr. Anstice and I played a single."

"Oh." He looked rather curiously at the other man. "Which was the victor? You?"

"Oh, Dr. Anstice always beats me!" Iris laughed. "You and I are more evenly matched, Bruce--though I confess you generally win."

"Well, come and have a sett before the light goes." He glanced again at Anstice. "Unless Anstice is giving you your revenge?"

"No, I'm off." Anstice straightened himself and held out his hand. "Good-bye, Miss Wayne. Thanks so much for our game."