'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.'
'And I've my pleasures,' said Airey. 'And I suppose we both find them in the end the best. Good-night.'
Each had put out a hand towards the veil that was between them; to each had come an impulse to pluck it away. But courage failed, and it hung there still. Both went back to their pleasures. In the ears of both Peggy Ryle's whole-hearted laughter, her soft merry 'Hurrah!' that no obvious cause called forth, echoed with the mockery of an unattainable delight. You need clear soul-space for a laugh like that.