'I don't know what I meant,' he growled, as he laid her paper on the mantelpiece.
Trix wandered to the window and sat down in the chair generally appropriated to Peggy Ryle.
'I'm sick of myself,' she said.
'A self's not such an easy thing to get rid of, though.'
She glanced at him with some constraint. 'I'm afraid I'm bothering you? I really have no right to make you doleful over my follies. You've kept out of it all yourself; I needn't drag you into it.' She rose as if she would go. Airey Newton stood motionless. It seemed as though he would let her leave him without a word.
She had not in her heart believed that he would. She in her turn stood still for a moment. When he made no sign, she raised her head in proud resentment; her voice was cold and offended. 'I'm sorry I troubled you, Mr. Newton.' She began to walk towards the door, passing him on the way. Suddenly he sprang forward and caught her by the hands.
'Don't go!' he said in a peremptory yet half-stifled whisper.
Trix's eyes filled with tears. 'I thought you couldn't really mean to do that,' she murmured. 'Oh, think of what it is, think of it! What's left for me?'
He had loosed her hands as quickly as he had caught them, and she clasped them in entreaty.
'I'm neither bad enough nor good enough. I tried to marry for position and money. I was bad enough to do that. I wasn't bad enough to go on telling the lies. Oh, I began! Now I'm not good enough or brave enough to face what I've brought myself to. And yet it would kill me to be bad enough and degraded enough to take the only way out.'