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"Whether it is safer with you Of course, as a doctor you can get plenty of your own----"

"I shan't be tempted to steal yours for rimly; and the Fates who rule the lives of men probably save it to you myself, so you h already tired of the subject; and without more ado Anstice slipped the little white packet into his pocket, and took leave of its fore her ure of Chloe Carstairs frohts as he went about his day's work Intuitively he knew that she was a bitterly unhappy woman, that her life, like his own, had been rent in two by a cataclyss, and he told himself that this woman, too, had been down in the depths even as he had been And no man, no woman, who has once known the blackness of the abyss, that "outer darkness" in which the soul sits apart in a horror of loneliness, can ever view the world again with quite the clear-eyed vision of the nor to who experiences area week later Anstice received a note from Mrs Carstairs

"DEAR DR ANSTICE," "My brother has unexpectedly written to offer hihts, and I shall be pleased if you will co at half-past seven to meet him I have invited Miss Wayne, so please complete our quartette if you can"

"Sincerely," "CHLOE CARSTAIRS"

For so the question, the note in his hand

He had no engage The people of Littlefield, puzzled, perhaps a little piqued, by the aloofness of hisbut his professional capacity, though they called upon his services in and out of season; and Sir Richard Wayne and Mr Carey, the gentle, courtly Vicar of the parish, were the only two men ho pipe or cigar

So that there was no reason why he should hesitate to accept Chloe Carstairs' invitation for that particular evening, yet hesitate he did, unaccountably; and when, after fifteen minutes indecision, he suddenly scribbled and dispatched an acceptance, the one fro impulse to recall the letter