'You child!' cried Trix, half-laughing, half-crying. 'But you're a wonderful child. Can't you save me, Peggy?'
'What from?'
'Oh, I suppose, in the end, from myself. I'm reckless. I'm drifting. Will he come again, Peggy?'
Peggy had no radical remedy, but her immediate prescription was not lacking in wisdom as a temporary expedient. She sent Trix to bed, and was obeyed with a docility which would have satisfied any of those who had set themselves to teach Trix moral lessons. Then Peggy herself sat down and engaged in the task of thinking. It had not been at all a prosperous day. Fricker was a source of despair, Chance of a new apprehension; Trix herself was a perplexity most baffling of all. The ruin of self-respect, bringing in its train an abandonment of hope for self, was a strange and bewildering spectacle; she did not see how to effect its repair. Trix's horror of yielding to the man, combined with her fear that she might yield, was a state of mind beyond Peggy's power of diagnosis; she knew only that it clamoured for instant and strong treatment.
Beaufort Chance would come again! Suddenly Peggy determined that he should—on a day she would fix! She would charge herself with that. She smiled again as a hope came into her mind. She had been considerably impressed with Connie Fricker.
The greater puzzle remained behind, the wider, more forlorn hope on which everything turned. 'How much do men love women?' asked Peggy Ryle.
Then the thought of her pledged word flashed across her mind. She might not tell Airey that Trix was ruined; she might not tell Airey that she herself knew his secret. She had hoped to get something from Airey without those disclosures; it was hopeless without them to ask for four thousand pounds—or three thousand five hundred either.
Having been sent to bed, Trix seemed inclined to stay there. She lay there all next day, very quiet, but open-eyed, not resting but fretting and fearing, unequal to her evil fortune, prostrated by the vision of her own folly, bereft of power to resist or will to recover from the blow. Peggy watched her for hours, and then, late in the afternoon, slipped out. Her eyes were resolute under the low brow with its encroaching waves of sunny hair.
Airey Newton let her in. The door of the safe was ajar; he pushed it to with his foot. The red-leather book lay open on the table, displaying its neatly ruled, neatly inscribed pages. He saw her glance at it, and she noticed an odd little shrug of his shoulders as he walked across the room and put the tea into the pot. She had her small bag with her, and laid it down by the bread-and-butter plate. Airey knew it by sight; he had seen her stow away in it the money which he delivered to her from the custody of the safe.
'I can't fill that again for you,' he said warningly, as he gave her tea.