'Tell me,' she said. 'If you'd really been a very poor man, as we all believed you were, would you ever have thought it wise or possible to marry a woman like me?' She had an eye for a searching question. Airey perceived that. 'Most pertinent, if I were poor! But now you see I'm not. I'm well off--and I'm a prodigal.' 'Ah, you know the truth, you never would!' 'I can't know the truth. I shall find it out only if you marry me now.' 'Suppose I said yes? I said yes to Mortimer Mervyn!' 'And you ran away because----' 'Because I told him----' 'Let me put it in my way, please,' interrupted Airey, suavely but decisively. 'Because you weren't a perfect individual, and he was a difficult person to explain that to. Isn't that about it?' Trix made a woeful gesture; that was rather less than it, she thought. 'And what did he do? Did he come after you? Did he say, "The woman I love is in trouble; she's ruined; she's so ashamed that she couldn't tell the truth even to me. Even from me she has fled, because she has become unbearable to herself and is terrified of me"? Did he say that? And did he put his traps in a bag, and take a special train, and come after you?' Trix's lips curved in an irrepressible smile at this picture of a line of conduct imputed, even hypothetically, to the Under-Secretary for War. 'He didn't do exactly that,' she murmured. 'Not he! He said, "She's come a cropper--that's her look-out. But people who come croppers won't do for me. No croppers in the Barmouth family! We don't like them; we aren't accustomed to them in the Barmouth family. I've my career," he said. "That's more to me than she is."' Airey paused a moment and held up an emphatic finger. 'In point of fact, that miserable man, Mervyn, behaved exactly as I should have done a fortnight ago. Substitute his prejudices and his career for my safe and my money, and he and I would be exactly the same--I mean, a fortnight ago. If ever a man lost a woman by his own act, Mervyn is the man!' 'So if I say yes to you, and run away----?' 'The earth isn't big enough to hide you, nor the railway fares big enough to stop me.' 'And Beaufort Chance?' she murmured, trying him again. 'Men who buy love get the sort of love that's for sale,' he answered in brief contempt. She smiled as, leaning forward, she put her last question. 'And Mr. Fricker?' said she. Airey gave a tug at his beard and a puzzled whimsical glance at her. 'Do you press me as to that?' 'Yes, of course I do. What about Mr. Fricker?' 'Well, from all I can learn, it does appear to me that you behaved in a damned shabby way to Fricker. I've not a word to say for you there, not one.' The answer was so unexpected, so true, so honest, that Trix's laughter rang out in genuine merriment for the first time for many days. 'And when old Fricker saw his chance, I don't wonder that he gave you a nasty dig. It was pure business with Fricker--and you went back on him all along the line!'