'That's my name,' answered Trix, wondering greatly, but thanking heaven for a soul who knew her. In the _pensions_ they never knew who you were, but were always trying to find out, and generally succeeded the day after you went away. 'That's very curious,' he went on. 'I daresay you'll be surprised, but your photograph stands on my bedroom mantel-piece. I knew you directly from it. It was sent to me.' 'When was it sent you?' she asked. 'At the time of your marriage.' He grew grave as he spoke. 'You were his friend?' 'I called myself so.' Conversation was busy round them, yet he lowered his voice to add, 'I don't know now whether I had any right.' 'Why not?' 'I gave up very soon.' Trix's eyes shot a quick glance at him and she frowned a little. 'Well, I ought to have been more than a friend, and so did I,' she said. 'It would have been utterly useless, of course. Reason recognises that, but then conscience isn't always reasonable.' She agreed with a nod as she galloped through her fish, eager to overtake the _menu_. 'Besides, I have----' He hesitated a moment, smiling apologetically and playing nervously with a knife. 'I have a propensity myself, and that makes me judge him more easily--and myself not so lightly.' She looked at his pint of _ordinaire_ with eyebrows raised. 'Oh, no, quite another,' he assured her, smiling. 'But it's enough to teach me what propensities are.' 'What is it? Tell me.' She caught eagerly at the strange luxury of intimate talk. 'Never! But, as I say, I've learnt from it. Are you alone here, Mrs. Trevalla?' 'Here and everywhere,' said Trix, with a sigh and a smile. 'Come for a stroll after dinner. I'm an old friend of Vesey's, you know.' The last remark was evidently thrown in as a concession to rules not held in much honour by the speaker. Trix said that she would come; the outing seemed a treat to her after the _pensions_. They drank beer together on the boulevards; he heard her story, and he said many things to her, waving (as the evening wore on) a pipe to and fro from his mouth to the length of his arm. It was entirely owing to the things which he said that evening on the boulevards that she sat now in the flat over the river, her mourning doffed, her guaranteed _pensions_ forsaken, London before her, an unknown alluring sea. 'What you want,' he told her, with smiling vehemence, 'is a revenge. Hitherto you've done nothing; you've only had things done to you. You've made nothing; you've only been made into things yourself. Life has played with you; go and play with it.' Trix listened, sitting very still, with eager eyes. There was a life, then--a life still open to her; the door was not shut, nor her story of necessity ended. 'I daresay you'll scorch your fingers; for the fire burns. But it's better to die of heat than of cold. And if trouble comes, call at 6A Danes Inn.' 'Where in the world is Danes Inn?' she asked, laughing.