He rose and looked round the lovely old garden rather regretfully.
"How lucky you are to be able to spend the summer days in such a cool, shady spot as this! I wish you could see some of the stuffy cottages I go into round here—windows hermetically sealed, and even the fireplaces, when there are any, blocked up!"
She looked at him rather strangely.
"Do you know. Dr. Anstice," she said, irrelevantly, it seemed, "I don't believe you ought to be a doctor. Oh, I don't mean you aren't very clever—and kind—but somehow I don't believe you were meant to spend your days going in and out of stuffy cottages and attending to little village children with measles and whooping-cough!"
"Don't you?" Anstice leaned against the trunk of the big cedar under which she sat, and apparently forgot the need for haste. "To tell you the truth I sometimes wonder to find myself here. When I was younger, you know, I never intended to go in for general practice. I had dreams, wild dreams of specializing. I was ambitious, and intended making some marvellous discovery which should revolutionize medical science...."
He broke off abruptly, and when he spoke again his voice held the old bitter note which she had not heard of late.
"Well, that's all over. I lost ambition when I lost everything else, and now I suppose I shall go on to the end of the chapter as a general practitioner, attending old women in stuffy cottages, and children with measles and whooping-cough!"
He laughed; but Iris' face was grave.
"But, Dr. Anstice"—she spoke rather slowly—"isn't it possible for you to go back to those dreams and ambitions? Suppose you were to start again—to try once more to make the discovery you speak of. Mightn't it ..." her voice faltered a moment, but her grey eyes were steady, "... mightn't that be the way out—for you?"
There was a sudden silence, broken only by the cooing of a wood-pigeon in a tall tree close at hand. Then Anstice said thoughtfully: