"Miss Wayne"—he spoke rather hoarsely—"I wonder if you will think me a bear if I run away after this dance? I would not have missed these few minutes with you for anything the world might offer me; but somehow I am not in tune with gaiety to-night."
She shot a quick glance at his haggard face; and even in the midst of her own happy excitement she felt a vivid impulse of sympathy.
"Dr. Anstice, I'm so sorry." Just for an instant she laid her fingers gently on his arm; and the light touch made him wince. "You said when you came in that you had been detained, and you looked so serious I thought it must have been something dreadful which had kept you. I don't wonder you find all this"—she waved her small white fan comprehensively round—"jars upon you—now."
"Yes," he said, snatching at the opening she gave him, and longing only for the moment when he might say good-bye and leave her adorable, maddening presence. "It jars, as you say—not because it isn't all delightful and inspiring in itself, but because"—suddenly he felt an inexplicably savage desire to hurt her, as a man in pain may seek to wound his tenderest nurse—"because not many miles away from here there's a poor mother weeping, like Rachel, for her child, and refusing to be comforted."
She turned pale, and he felt like a murderer as he watched the light die out of her big grey eyes.
"A child—the child you went to see—it died?"
"Yes. She was just a year old—and their only child."
Now, to his remorse, he saw that she was crying; and instantly the cruel impulse died out of his heart and a wild desire to comfort her took its place.
"Miss Wayne, for God's sake don't cry! I had no right to tell you—it was brutal, unpardonable of me to cloud your happiness at such a moment as this. I ... I've no excuse to offer—none, at least, that you could understand—but it makes me feel the meanest criminal alive to see you cry!"
No woman could have withstood the genuine remorse in his tone; and Iris dabbed her eyes with a little lacy handkerchief and smiled forgiveness rather tremulously.