Afterwards

In the silence which followed his last words a big brown moth, attracted by the yellow candlelight, blundered into the room, and began to flutter madly round the unresponsive flame; and in the poignant hush the beating of his foolish wings sounded loudly, insistently.

Then Anstice spoke very quietly.

"You mean I am to stand aside and let you have a fair field with the lady?" He could not bring himself to mention her name.

"Yes. That's just what I do mean." Cheniston spoke defiantly--or so it seemed to the man who listened.

Again the silence fell, and again the only sound to be heard was the soft flutter of the brown wings as the moth circled vainly round the candle flame which would inevitably prove fatal to him by and by.

"I see." Anstice's face was very pale now. "At least you do me the honour of looking upon me in the light of a possible rival."

"I do--and I'll go further," said Cheniston suddenly. "I have an uncomfortable notion that if you tried you could cut me out. Oh--I'm not sure"--he regretted the admission as soon as it was made--"after all, Miss Wayne and I are excellent friends, and upon my soul I sometimes dare to think I have a chance. But she has a great regard for you, I know, and if you really set out to win her----"

"I'm afraid you overrate my capabilities," said Anstice rather cynically. "Miss Wayne has certainly never given me the slightest reason to suppose she would be ready to listen to me, did I overstep the bounds of friendship."

"Of course not!" Cheniston smiled grimly. "Miss Wayne is not the sort of girl to give any man encouragement. But as a man of honour, Anstice"--again his voice cut like steel--"don't you think I have the prior right to the first innings, so to speak?"

"You mean I am to stand aside, efface myself, and let you chip in before me?" His colloquial speech accorded badly with his formal tone. "I quite see your point of view; and no doubt you think yourself justified in your demand; but still----"

"I do think I'm justified, yes," broke in Cheniston coolly. "After all, if one man has a precious stone, a diamond, let us say, and another man manages to lose it, well in the unlikely event of the two of them discovering another stone, which of them has the best right to the new one?"