n a big Swansea bowl, and bright with silver and glass,
Anstice owned inwardly to a feeling of pleasure at his position.
Although as a rule he loved his solitude, welcomed the silence of the
old panelled house he had taken in Littlefield, and shunned those of his
kind who had no direct need of his services, there were times when his
self-sought loneliness weighed heavily upon his spirit, when the ghosts
of the past, whose shrouded forms were ever present to remind him that
he had made a fatal mistake on that bygone morning in India, were but
poor company.

At first, during that first haunted year, when Hilda Ryder's face was
ever before his eyes, her sad and tender accents in his ear, he had
sought many and dubious ways of laying those same ghosts. It had seemed
to him, during those dreadful days, that although some instinct within
him forbade him to end his own life, none could doubt his right to
alleviate his mental suffering by any means he knew; and when temporary
oblivion, a blessed forgetfulness, could be purchased at the price of a
pinprick, it seemed not only overscrupulous but foolish to forgo that
Nirvana.

But that indulgence, too, had nearly ended in disaster; and for the last
two years his only use for the alluring drug had been to alleviate the
pain of others. Yet the struggle was a hard one; and he wondered
sometimes, rather hopelessly, if he would have the strength to continue
it to the bitter end.

But to-day, sitting in the pretty room, with the sun pouring in through
the casement windows, widely opened to the green garden beyond, Anstice
owned that for once life seemed to be in harmony with the beautiful
spring world around.

As for Iris Wayne, he told himself presently that he had rarely seen a
prettier girl! Although at present his admiration was quite impersonal,
it was none the less sincere; and his approval of her grey eyes, set
widely apart beneath her crown of sunny hair, of the delicately rounded
face, the frank mouth, which disclosed teeth as white as milk, was
enhanced by the fact that every line, every tint spoke of flawless
health and a mind attuned to the simple, gracious things of life rather
than those which are complex and hard to comprehend.

Looking from Iris, bright-eyed and alert, to Chloe, sitting at the head
of her table in a white cloth gown which somehow looked elaborate in
spite of its utter simplicity, Anstice was struck by the contrast
between them. Although the differ