hat 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
y