'A pretty figure I should cut!' was his good-humoured, rather despairing comment. Trix was surprised by a feeling stronger than she could have anticipated; she desired to escape from it; it seemed as though Airey Newton and his friends were laying too forcible a hold on her. They had nothing to do with the life that was to be hers; they were utterly outside that, though they might help her to laugh away an evening or amuse her with their comments on human nature and its phases. To her his friends and he were essentially a distraction; they and he must be kept in the place appropriate to distractions. At the other end of the table an elementary form of joke was achieving a great success. It lay in crediting Peggy with unmeasured wealth, in assigning her quarters in the most fashionable part of the town, in marrying her to the highest bigwig whose title occurred to any one of the company. She was passed from Park Lane to Grosvenor Square and assigned every rank in the peerage. Schemes of benevolence were proposed to her, having for their object the endowment of literature and art. 'You will not continue the exercise of your profession, I presume?' asked Childwick, referring to Peggy's projected lessons in the art of painting and a promise to buy her works which she had wrung from a dealer notoriously devoted to her. 'She won't know us any more,' moaned Arty Kane. 'She'll glare at us from boxes--boxes paid for,' sighed Harnack. 'I shall never lose any more frocks,' said Elfreda with affected ruefulness. Trix smiled at all this--a trifle sadly. What was attributed in burlesque to the newly enriched Peggy was really going to be almost true of herself. Well, she had never belonged to them; she had been a visitor always. The most terrible suggestion came from Mrs. John--rather late, of course, and as if Mrs. John had taken some pains with it. 'She'll have her hair done quite differently.' The idea produced pandemonium. 'What of my essay?' demanded Childwick. 'What of my poem?' cried Arty Kane. Everybody agreed that a stand must be made here. A formal pledge was demanded from Peggy. When she gave it her health was drunk with acclamation. A lull came with the arrival of coffee. Perhaps they were exhausted. At any rate when Miles Childwick began to talk they did not stop him at once as their custom was, but let him go on for a little while. He was a thin-faced man with a rather sharp nose, prematurely bald, and bowed about the shoulders. Trix Trevalla watched him with some interest.