"Yes, thanks, Miss Wayne." He lied so convincingly that the girl believed him. "I'm just off again—you must excuse me, but you know my time is not my own."
"No." He thought she looked a little pale this afternoon. "I quite understand, and I think it is very nice of you to come at all. You are coming to-morrow?"
"I hope so." Again he lied, and something in the frank eyes which were raised to his made him ashamed of his mendacity. "Of course—it's possible I may be prevented, but in any case, Miss Wayne, please remember my best wishes will be yours all day."
As though reminded of something she spoke impulsively.
"Dr. Anstice, I've never thanked you—except in a note—for your lovely present. It is really quite the most uncommon one I have had, and I shall value it immensely."
"I am glad you like it," he said. He had sent her a pair of ancient Chinese vases which his father had received many years ago from the grateful wife of a mandarin to whom he had once rendered a service. "I hardly knew what to send you, and then I remembered you once said you liked curios."
"I do—and these are so lovely." As she stood talking to him in the sunlight Anstice told himself that this was really his farewell to the girl he had known and loved, and his eyes could hardly leave her adorable face. The next time they met—if Fate ordained that they should meet again—she would be Bruce Cheniston's wife; and believing as he did that this would be their last meeting as man and maid, Anstice took the hand she held out to him with a very sore heart.
"Good-bye, Miss Wayne." Just for a moment he hesitated, feeling that he could not bear to let her go like this; and the girl, puzzled by his manner, waited rather uneasily, her hand in his. Then he gave her fingers a last clasp, wringing them unconsciously hard, and let them go.
"Good-bye, Dr. Anstice." Standing as she did on the threshold of a new life, face to face with a mystery she dreaded, yet was prepared, to fathom, perhaps Iris' perceptions were a little quickened. All at once she saw that this man looked upon her with different eyes from the other men she knew; and the memory of her strange fancy earlier in the summer gave her the key suddenly to his rather curious manner of bidding her farewell.
With a foolish, but purely womanly, impulse of compassion, she spoke again, laying her hand for a second on his arm with a friendliness which no man could have misunderstood.