pe.

"I thought Antony Gray could have a taste of living as one of the
people," he ended. "Perhaps it would make him a better master than I had
been. And then the scheme took shape."

"I see," said Trix slowly and thoughtfully.

"Well?" queried Nicholas.

Trix looked up at him. Her lips were smiling, but there were tears in her
eyes.

"I understand," she said. "Perhaps I understand ever so much better than
you think. But--but has it been worth it?"

Nicholas looked towards the fire.

"After the first planning, I don't honestly know that it has," he said.
"A thing falls flat with no one to share it with you. And Hilary never
really approved."

Again there was a silence, and again the odd pathos, the childishness of
the whole thing stirred Trix's heart. She said she understood, and she
did understand more profoundly than Nicholas could possibly have
conceived. In the few seconds of silence which followed, she reviewed
those solitary years in an amazingly quick mental process. She saw first
the pride which had built the barrier, and then the slow stagnation
behind it. She realized the two sentences which had penetrated the
barrier (he had been perfectly candid in his story) without being able to
destroy it, and then the faint stirrings of life within the almost
stagnant mind. And the result had been this perfectly mad scheme,--the
thought of a foolish boy conceived and carried out by the obstinate mind
of a man; a scheme childish, foolish, mad, and of value only in so far as
it had roused to faint life the mind of the lonely man who had conceived
it.

And now he had tired of it. It had become to him as valueless as a flimsy
toy; and yet he clung to it rather than leave himself with empty hands.
Without it, he had absolutely nothing to interest him,--a past on which
it hurt him to dwell by reason of its contrast with the present; a
present as lonely almost as that of a prisoner in solitary confinement;
and a future which to him was a mere blank, a grey nothingness.

Trix shivered involuntarily.

"And the fact remains, that I am dead," said Nicholas with a grim smile.

Trix turned suddenly towards him.

"Unless you have a sort of resurrection," she said.

Nicholas stared.

"Listen," said Trix.

CHAPTER XXXV

TRIX TRIUMPHANT

It was more than an hour before Trix departed, exultant, rejoicing.

Nicholas sat staring at the chair she had just vacated. He had been
bewitched, utterly bewitched, an