But Trix was pleased to prolong, even by so little, the atmosphere and associations of the evening, to be able to talk about it a little more, to question him while she questioned herself also indirectly. She put him through a catechism about the members of the party, delighted to elicit anything that confirmed her notion of their independence, their carelessness, and their comradeship. He answered what she asked, but in a rather absent melancholy fashion; a pall seemed to have fallen on his spirits again. She turned to him, attracted, not repelled, by his relapse into sadness. 'We're not equal to it, you and I,' she said with a laugh. 'We don't live there; we can only pay a visit, as you said.' He nodded, leaning back against the well-padded cushions with an air of finding unwonted ease. He looked tired and worn. 'Why? We work too hard, I suppose. Yes, I work too, in my way.' 'It's not work exactly,' he said. 'They work too, you know.' 'What is it then?' She bent forward to look at his face, pale in the light of the small carriage lamp. 'It's the Devil,' he told her. Their eyes met in a long gaze. Trix smiled appealingly. She had to go back to her difficult life--to Mervyn, to the Chance and Fricker entanglement. She felt alone and afraid. 'The Devil, is it? Have I raised him?' she asked. 'Well, you taught me how. If I--if I come to grief, you must help me.' 'You don't know in the least the sort of man you're talking to,' he declared, almost roughly. 'I know you're a good friend.' 'I am not,' said Airey Newton. Again their eyes met, their hearts were like to open and tell secrets that daylight hours would hold safely hidden. But it is not far--save in the judgment of fashion--from the Magnifique to Danes Inn, and the horse moved at a good trot. They came to a stand before the gates. 'I don't take your word for that,' she declared, giving him her hand. 'I sha'n't believe it without a test,' she went on in a lighter tone. 'And at any rate I sha'n't fail at your dinner-party.' 'No, don't fail at my party--my only party.' His smile was very bitter, as he relinquished her hand and opened the door of the brougham. But she detained him a moment; she was still reluctant to lose him, to be left alone, to be driven back to her flat and to her life. 'We're nice people! We have a splendid evening, and we end it up in the depths of woe! At least--you're in them too, aren't you?' She glanced past him up the gloomy passage, and gave a little shudder. 'How could you be anything else, living here?' she cried in accents of pity. 'You don't live here, yet you don't seem much better,' he retorted. 'You are beautiful and beautifully turned out--gorgeous! And your brougham is most comfortable. Yet you don't seem much better.' Trix was put on her defence; she awoke suddenly to the fact that she had been very near to a mood dangerously confidential. 'I've a few worries,' she laughed, 'but I have my pleasures too.'