'We're the world, I suppose, like other people, aren't we? I don't feel too good to belong to it!' 'If we're a bit of it, we ought to have more to say to it,' he suggested, smiling again. Trix shook her head. 'It's too big,' she objected sorrowfully. 'Big and hard, and, I believe, most horribly just.' Airey stroked his beard in meditation over this. 'I'm inclined to think it is rather just. But I'll be hanged if there's an iota of generosity about it!' said he. She held out her hand in farewell, and could not help meeting his eyes once again; those deep-set, tired, kindly eyes had a new attraction for her since her wanderings and adventures; they had the strong appeal of offering and of asking help all in the same look. She could not prevent herself from saying:-- 'May I come again?' 'You must come,' said Airey Newton in a low voice. He was left resolved that she of all the world should never know his secret. She went back saying that of all the world he at least should never learn how sore a fool she had been. Because of that glance between them these purposes were immutable in their minds. CHAPTER XVI MORAL LESSONS Mrs. Bonfill sore at the damage to her infallibility; Barmouth still feeling that rude and sacrilegious thrust at ennobled ribs; Lady Barmouth unable to look her neighbours in the face; Mervyn fearing the whispers and the titters; Lady Blixworth again wearily donning her armour, betaking herself to Barslett, goading Audrey Pollington into making herself attractive; the Glentorlys and a score more of exalted families feeling that they had been sadly 'let in,' treacherously beguiled into petting and patronising an impossible person; Airey Newton oppressed with scorn of himself, yet bound in his chains; Peggy persuaded that something must be done, and shaken out of her usual happiness by the difficulty of doing it--all these people, and no doubt more besides, proved that if the world is not a football for every wanton toe, neither is it an immovable unimpressionable mass, on which individual effort and the vagaries of this man or that make absolutely no impression. Trix's raid had met with defeat, but it had left its effect on many lives, its marks in many quarters. A sense of this joined with the recognition of her own present wretched state to create in Trix the feelings with which she regarded her past proceedings and their outcome. So many people must have grudges against her; if she was not penitent she was frightened; her instinct was to hide, however much she might still hanker after the glories of conspicuous station. Of Airey's disturbance and of Peggy's fretting, indeed, she had only a vague inkling; the world she had left was the vivid thing to her; it seemed to ring with her iniquities as her guilty ears listened from the seclusion of Harriet Street, Covent Garden. She knew it called her impossible; she could not have resented Lord Glentorly's 'pirate craft.'