Somehow the idea of marriage had never previously entered his head. Before the day which had, so to speak, cut his life in two, with a line of cleavage dividing the careless past from the ever-haunted future, he had been too busy, too much occupied in preparation for the brilliant career which he felt would one day be his, to allow thoughts of marriage to distract him from his chosen work. And since that fatal day, although his old enthusiasm, his old belief in himself and his capabilities, had long ago receded into the dim background, he had never consciously thought of any amelioration of the loneliness, the bitter, regretful solitude in which he now had his being.
Yet the thought of Iris Wayne was oddly, uncomfortably distracting; and in those weeks of May, during which he deliberately denied himself the sight of her, Anstice's face grew haggard, his eyes more sunken beneath their straight black brows.
Yet Fate ordained that he should meet her, more, do her service; and the meeting, with its subsequent conversation, was one which Iris at least was destined never to forget.
One grey and cloudy morning when the sun had forgotten to shine, and the air was warm and moist, Anstice was driving his car along a country road when he espied her sitting by the wayside with a rather woe-begone face.
Her motor-bicycle was beside her and she was engaged in tying a knot, with the fingers of her left hand aided by her teeth, in a roughly-improvised bandage which hid her right wrist.
On seeing his car she looked up; and something in the rather piteous expression of her grey eyes made him slow down beside her.
"What's wrong, Miss Wayne? Had a spill?"
She answered him ruefully.
"Yes. At least my motor skidded and landed me in the road. And I cut my wrist on a sharp stone—look!"
She held up a cruelly-jagged flint; and Anstice sprang out of his car and approached her.