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She took him up with unexpected comprehension

"I think I can understand that It has always seemed to me that it is not the people who have suffered who sympathizethey understand, if you knohat I mean, but they aren't just sorry like the people who haven't had any sorrows of their own to spend their pity on"

She broke off abruptly, and with equal abruptness Anstice suspended operations to ask, with a solicitude which belied his earlier speech, whether he were hurting her very badly

"Nonot at allat least, hardly at all," she answered honestly "I was just wishing I could explain myself better Now take Mrs Carstairs, for instance" Iris knew that Chloe had told Anstice her story "She has suffered as very few people like her have to do, but I don't think it has made her exactly what you call sympathetic"

"That is just what Iis apt to destroy one's nerve of sympathy for others It atrophies, withers away in the blast of one's personal tragedy; and although Mrs Carstairs s of another unhappy woman more fully than--well, than you could do, I think you would be more likely to feel e call 'sorry for' that woree with me," said Iris slowly "Dr Anstice, would you think me very--impertinent--if I say I'ht you"--she stopped, flushed, but continued bravely--"you looked so sad sometimes I used to wonder if you too had suffered, like poor Mrs Carstairs"

For a irl's heart missed a beat as she wondered whether she had said too much

Then: "Miss Wayne"--Anstice's voice reassured her even while it filled her with a kind of wondering foreboding--"I should never find any ih to express I have suffered--bitterly--and the worst oflies in the fact that others--one other at least besides ht"

Again her answer surprised him by the depth of comprehension it conveyed

"That, too, I can understand," said Iris gently "I have often tried to ily harmed another person; and it has always seemed to me that one would feel as one does when one has spoken unkindly, or impatiently, at least, to a child"