he
held and studied them with eager eyes.

Four of them were of Iris--happy little studies of her in delightfully
natural poses. In one she was standing bare-headed beneath a tall
date-palm, shading her eyes with her hand as though looking for someone
across the expanse of sunny sand before her. In another she stood by the
edge of the Nile, in converse with a native woman who bore a _balass_ on
her head; and even the tiny picture was sufficiently large to bring out
the contrast between the slim, fair English girl in her white gown and
Panama hat and the dusky Egyptian, whose dark skin and closely-swathed
robes gave her the look of some Old Testament character, a look borne
out by the surroundings of reed-fringed river and plumy, tufted palms.
In the third photograph Iris was on horseback; but it was the fourth and
last which brought the blood to Anstice's brow, made his heart beat
quickly with an emotion in which delight, regret, wild happiness and
over-mastering sorrow fought for the predominance.

It was a photograph of Iris' head, nothing more; but it brought out
every separate charm with an art which seemed to bring the living girl
before the man who pored over the print with greedy eyes.

She was looking straight out from the photograph and in her face was
that look of half-laughing, half-wistful tenderness which Anstice knew
so well. Her lips were ever so slightly parted; and in her whole
expression was something so vital as to be almost startling, as though
some tinge of the sitter's personality had indeed been caught by the
camera and imprisoned for ever in the picture. It was Iris as Anstice
knew--and loved--her best: youth personified, yet with a womanliness, a
gracious femininity, which seemed to promise a more than commonly
attractive maturity.

And as he looked at the little picture, the presentment of the girl he
loved caught and imprisoned by the magic of the sun, Anstice felt the
full bitterness of his hopeless love surge over his soul in a flood
whose onrush no philosophy could stem. To him Iris would always be the
one desired woman in the world. No other woman, be she a hundred times
more beautiful, could ever fill the place held in his heart by this
grey-eyed girl. With her, life would have been a perpetual feast, a
lingering sacrament. Her companionship would have been sufficient to
turn the dull fare of ordinary life into the mysterious Bread and Wine
which only lovers know; and with her beside