Trix drew a deep breath.

"Mr. Danver, did you ever care for any one?"

Nicholas's eyes blazed suddenly.

"What the devil--" he began. "I beg your pardon. I gave you leave to speak."

Trix waved her hand.

"I was talking about men," she said, "men pals. Were there any you ever cared about?"

Nicholas laughed shortly.

"Your father, my dear young lady, and Richard Gray, father of the man who has led to this interesting discussion."

"They were really your friends?" queried Trix.

"The best fellows that ever stepped," said Nicholas with unwonted enthusiasm.

Trix nodded. Her eyes were shining. She was thinking of her aunt's disclosure regarding this Richard Gray.

"And I suppose," she said coolly, "you rejoiced when Richard Gray lost his money? You laughed at him for a fool?"

Nicholas stared at her.

"What on earth do you mean?" he asked. "I never knew he had lost money. I would have given my right hand to help him if I had known."

"He did lose money," said Trix. "But that's beside the point. You'd have helped him if you could? You wouldn't have jeered at him?"

"What do you take me for?" asked Nicholas half angrily.

Trix looked very straight at him.

"Only what you take others for, Mr. Danver."

There was a dead silence.

"Listen," said Trix suddenly. "You would have been generous to him, because you cared for him. Do you really think you are the only generous friend?"

Nicholas looked at her. There was a gleam of laughter in his eyes.

"It strikes me you are a very shrewd young woman," he said.

"It's only logical common sense," declared Trix stoutly.

Once more there fell a silence, a silence in which Nicholas was watching the girl opposite to him.

"Mr. Danver, will you tell me exactly what amus.e.m.e.nt you found in all this? What originated the idea in your mind?" Her voice was pleading.

For a moment Nicholas was silent.

"Yes," he said suddenly, "I will tell you."

It was not a long story, and to Trix it was oddly pathetic. It was the mixture partly of regret, partly the desire of justice to be administered to his property after his death, and partly the queer mad love of pranks which had been the keynote of his nature, and which had stirred again within the half-dead body. He told it all very simply, baldly almost, and yet he could not quite hide a certain queer wistfulness underlying it, the wistfulness of pride which has built barriers too strong for it, and yet from which it longs to escape.

"I thought Antony Gray could have a taste of living as one of the people," he ended. "Perhaps it would make him a better master than I had been. And then the scheme took shape."

"I see," said Trix slowly and thoughtfully.

"Well?" queried Nicholas.

Trix looked up at him. Her lips were smiling, but there were tears in her eyes.

"I understand," she said. "Perhaps I understand ever so much better than you think. But--but has it been worth it?"

Nicholas looked towards the fire.

"After the first planning, I don't honestly know that it has," he said.

"A thing falls flat with no one to share it with you. And Hilary never really approved."

Again there was a silence, and again the odd pathos, the childishness of the whole thing stirred Trix's heart. She said she understood, and she did understand more profoundly than Nicholas could possibly have conceived. In the few seconds of silence which followed, she reviewed those solitary years in an amazingly quick mental process. She saw first the pride which had built the barrier, and then the slow stagnation behind it. She realized the two sentences which had penetrated the barrier (he had been perfectly candid in his story) without being able to destroy it, and then the faint stirrings of life within the almost stagnant mind. And the result had been this perfectly mad scheme,--the thought of a foolish boy conceived and carried out by the obstinate mind of a man; a scheme childish, foolish, mad, and of value only in so far as it had roused to faint life the mind of the lonely man who had conceived it.

And now he had tired of it. It had become to him as valueless as a flimsy toy; and yet he clung to it rather than leave himself with empty hands.

Without it, he had absolutely nothing to interest him,--a past on which it hurt him to dwell by reason of its contrast with the present; a present as lonely almost as that of a prisoner in solitary confinement; and a future which to him was a mere blank, a grey nothingness.

Trix shivered involuntarily.

"And the fact remains, that I am dead," said Nicholas with a grim smile.

Trix turned suddenly towards him.

"Unless you have a sort of resurrection," she said.

Nicholas stared.

"Listen," said Trix.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

TRIX TRIUMPHANT

It was more than an hour before Trix departed, exultant, rejoicing.

Nicholas sat staring at the chair she had just vacated. He had been bewitched, utterly bewitched, and he knew it. Her vitality, her insistence had carried him with her despite himself,--that and an odd under-current of something he could not entirely explain. He might have called it faith, only it was not faith as he had been accustomed to think of it, when he thought at all. It was so infinitely more alive and personal. And yet she had only once touched on what he would have termed religion.