uld like to know
what you meant just now. Won't you tell me? Or do you think I am too
stupid to understand?"

"No. But I think you are too young," he said; and the girl coloured.

"Of course if you would rather not----"

Something in her manner made him suddenly change his mind.

"There is no reason why I should make a mystery of it," he said. "I
hesitated about telling you because--well, for various reasons; but
after all you might as well know the truth. I tried to win forgetfulness
by the aid of drugs--morphia, to be exact."

He had startled her now.

"You took morphia----?" Her voice was dismayed.

"Yes, for nearly six months I gave myself up to it. I told myself there
was no real danger for me--I knew the peril of it so well. I wasn't like
the people who go in ignorantly for the thing; and find themselves bound
hand and foot, their lives in ruins round them. That is what I thought,
in my folly." He sighed, and his face looked careworn. "Well, I soon
found out that I was just like other people after all. I went into the
thing, thinking I should find a way out of my troubles. And I was
wrong."

"You gave it up?" Her voice was suddenly anxious.

"Yes. In the nick of time I came across an old friend--a friend of my
student days, who had been looking for me, unknown to me, for months. He
wanted me to do some research work for him--work that necessitated
visiting hospitals in Paris and Berlin and Vienna--and I accepted the
commission only too gladly."

"And--you gave up the terrible thing?"

"Yes. The new interest saved me, you know. I came back, after some
months of hard work, and found my friend on the eve of starting with an
expedition for Central Africa, to study tropical diseases; and had there
been a place for me I would have gone too. But there wasn't; and I was a
bit fagged, so after doing locum work for another friend for some time I
looked about for a practice, bought this one--and here I am."

"Dr. Anstice "--she spoke shyly, though her eyes met his bravely--"you
won't ever take that dreadful stuff again, will you? I am quite sure,"
said Iris Wayne, "that _that_ is not the way out."

"No," he answered steadily, "you are quite right. It isn't. But I haven't
found the way out yet." He paused a moment; then held out his hand, and
she put her uninjured left hand into it rather wonderingly. "Still, I
will not seek that way out again. I will promise--no, I won't promise,
for I'm only human and I coul