It was not till a good many hours later that the anticlimax of the recent situation struck Trix. Excitement had prevented her from realizing it at first. In the excitement of what the thing stood for, she had overlooked the utter triviality of the thing itself. When, later, the two separated themselves in a measure, and she looked at the thing as apart from what it indicated, the ludicrousness of it struck her with astounding force.

Nicholas Danver would give a tea-party.

And it was this, this small commonplace statement, which had kept the Duchessa, Miss Tibbutt, Doctor Hilary, and herself in solemn and amazed confabulation for at least two hours. It was infinitely more amazing even than the whole story of the past months, and Trix had given that in fairly detailed fashion, avoiding the Duchessa’s eyes, however, whenever she mentioned Antony’s name. Yes; it was what the tiny fact stood for that had astounded them; though now, with the fact in a measure separated from its meaning, Trix saw the almost absurdity of it.

Fifteen years of a living death to terminate in a tea-party!

It was an anticlimax which made her almost hysterical to contemplate. She felt that the affair ought to have wound up in some great movement, in some dignified action or fine speech, and it had descended to the merely ludicrous, or what, in view of those fifteen years, appeared the merely ludicrous. And she had been the instigator of it, and Doctor Hilary had called it a miracle. Which it truly was.

And yet, banishing the ludicrous from her mind, it was so entirely simple. There was not the faintest blare of trumpets, not a whisper even of an announcing voice, merely the fact that a solitary man would once more welcome friends beneath his roof.

The only real touch of excitement about the business would be when Antony Gray learnt the news, and he and the Duchessa met. And yet even that somehow lost its significance before the absorbing yet quiet fact of Nicholas’s own resurrection.

“He is looking forward to it like a child,” Trix had said.

And Miss Tibbutt had suddenly taken off her spectacles and wiped them.

“It’s an odd little thing to feel choky about,” she had said with a shaky laugh.

Presently she had left the room. A few moments later Doctor Hilary had also taken his leave. Trix and the Duchessa had been left alone. Suddenly the Duchessa had looked across at Trix.

“What made you do it?” she had asked.

Trix understood the question, and the colour had rushed to her face.

“What made you do it?” the Duchessa had repeated.

“For you,” Trix had replied in a very small voice.

“You guessed?” the Duchessa had asked quietly.

Trix nodded. It had been largely guesswork. There was no need, at the moment at all events, to speak of Miss Tibbutt’s share in the matter. That was for Tibby herself to do if she wished.

The Duchessa had got up from her chair. She had gone quietly over to Trix and kissed her. Then she, too, had left the room.

Trix stared thoughtfully into the fire. Its light was playing on the silver-backed brushes on her dressing-table, gleaming on the edges of gilt frames, and throwing her shadow big and dancing on the wall behind her. The curtains were undrawn, and without the trees stood ghostly and bare against the pale grey sky. There was the dead silence in the atmosphere which tells of frost.

It was just that,—the oddness of little things, and their immense importance in life, and simply because of the influence they have on the human soul. It was this that made the fact of Nicholas Danver giving a tea-party of such extraordinary importance, though, viewed apart from its meaning, it was the most trivial and commonplace thing in the world.

Trix got up from her chair, and went over to the window.

Not a twig of the bare trees was stirring. The earth lay quiet in the grip of the frost king; a faint pink light still lingered in the western sky. She looked at the rustic seat and the table beneath the lime trees. How amazingly long ago the day seemed when she had sat there with Pia, and heard the little tale of wounded pride. How amazingly long ago that very morning seemed, when she had seen the sunlight flood her window-pane with ruby jewels. Even her interview with Father Dormer seemed to belong to another life. It had been another Trix, and not she herself who had propounded her difficulty to him, a difficulty so astoundingly simple of solution.

She heaved a little sigh of intense satisfaction, and then she caught sight of a figure crossing the grass.

The Duchessa had come out of the house and was going towards the garden gate.