Millie shrugged her shoulders.
"How did it begin?" he asked. "Upon my word I don't remember. Oh yes, I----" and Millie interrupted him.
"What does it matter, Tony, how the quarrel began? It did begin, and another will begin to-morrow. We can't help ourselves, and you have given the reason. Here we are cooped up by ourselves with nothing else to do."
Tony pulled thoughtfully at his moustache.
"And we swore off quarrelling, too. When was that?"
"Yesterday."
"Yesterday!" exclaimed Tony, with a start of surprise. "By George, so it was. Only yesterday."
Millie looked up at him, and the trouble upon his face brought a smile to hers. She laid a hand upon his arm.
"It's no use swearing off, Tony," she said. "We are both of us living all the time in a state of exasperation. I just--tingle with it, there's no other word. And the least, smallest thing which goes wrong sets us quarrelling. I don't think either of us is to blame. The house alone gets on our nerves, doesn't it? These great empty, silent, dingy rooms, with their tarnished furniture. Oh! they are horrible! I wander through them sometimes and it always seems to me that, a long time ago, people lived here who suddenly felt one morning that they couldn't stand it for a single moment longer, and ran out and locked the street door behind them; and I have almost done it myself. The very sunlight comes through the windows timidly, as if it knew it had no right here at all."
She leaned back in her chair, looking at Tony with eyes that were hopeless and almost haggard. As Tony listened to her outburst the remorse deepened on his face.