face is apt to cause
one's relations a quite heartless amusement!"

"Well, it must be a consolation to be taken seriously," she said, "and I
do think sympathy is wonderfully cheering. Are all doctors as
sympathetic as you, Dr. Anstice?"

For a moment Anstice suspected her of mockery. He was well aware that
for all his real sympathy with acute suffering he was not remarkable for
patience in cases of less reality; and he knew that the people whose
ailments belonged to the latter category were apt to find his manner
abrupt and unsympathetic.

But a glance at Iris' face showed him she had spoken in good faith; and
he answered her in the same spirit.

"There are a good many men in the world who are far more sympathetic
with suffering humanity than I, Miss Wayne." For a moment his face
clouded, and Iris noticed the change wonderingly. "I'm afraid my manner
isn't all it might be. It isn't that I'm not genuinely sorry for people
who are, or think themselves, ill; but ..." for a second he hesitated,
then a quite unusual impulse drove him into speech, "... the fact is, I
once had a knock-down blow myself; and curiously enough it seemed to
dull my capacity for entering into the sufferings of others."

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 sympathize ... they understand, if
you know what 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.

"No ... not at all ... at 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 I mean," said Anstice. "Somehow I think suffering is
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
might be able to enter into the feelings of another unhappy woman more
fully than--well, than you could do, I think you would be more likely to
feel what we call 'sorry for' that w