She had believed him when he told her he would not again deliver himself into bondage to the fatal drug, and although he had not given her his promise—foreseeing even then the possibility of this black hour—he had meant, at the moment, to turn his back for ever on the seductive thing which whispers such sweet, such deliriously fatal promises to the man in the clutch of any agony he does not know how to bear.
So, although on the last two or three occasions he had not won the victory without a struggle, Anstice had managed to win through without lowering his flag; but to-night he began to wonder whether after all it were worth while waging the unequal war any longer.
He had parted from Iris Wayne, as he thought, for ever. As the wife of Bruce Cheniston he must henceforward regard her; and although he was no saint, to covet his neighbour's wife was not compatible with Anstice's code of decency.
He might love her still—at this moment he thought he knew that he would love her always—but for all practical purposes their friendship, with all its privileges and its obligations, was at an end. And this being so, why should he hesitate to gain, if he might, relief from this agony of mind and body by the help of the drug he had hitherto forsworn?
It is always hard on a man when to physical anguish is added agony of mind, since in that dual partnership of pain no help may be rendered either by its complementary part; and it does not need a physician to know that such help given by the one to the other is frequently a ruling factor in the recovery of the sick body or mind. And to-night Anstice was enduring a physical and mental suffering which taxed mind and body to their utmost limits, and absolutely precluded the possibility of any helpful reaction one upon the other.
His eyeballs felt as though they were being pierced by red-hot needles; while the stabbing pain in his head increased every moment. Had he witnessed such suffering in another he would instantly have set about alleviating it so far as his skill might allow; but he told himself that there was only one effectual remedy for him and that was forbidden him by his implied promise to Iris Wayne. And so he sat on in a corner of the couch in his dim and shadowy room, and endured the excruciating pain as best he might.
The house was very quiet, and suddenly he remembered that the servants were out, witnessing the fireworks which Sir Richard had provided in the park of Greengates for the entertainment of the village on the eve of his daughter's wedding.
They had asked permission to go, and he had granted it readily enough; and now he was grateful for the peace and tranquillity which their absence engendered in the dark and quiet house.
Dimmer and more gloomy grew the room in which he sat—his consulting-room, chosen to-night for its long window open to the garden without. More and more thickly clustered the shadows round him as he sat half-sunk in a corner of the big leather couch. Once an owl hooted in the tall trees outside the house, and the strange, melancholy note seemed a fit accompaniment to the eerie stillness of the night.
Worse and ever more hard to bear grew the fierce throbbing in his head and eyes, but his wretchedness of mind ran a good race with his bodily suffering; and had he been asked, suddenly, the nature of the pain which tormented him he would have found it hard to answer immediately.