"I think so," said Tony.
"At all events, the road is visible ahead," she went on. "One sees it glimmering, one can keep between the banks; while, in the little lighted room it is easy to get lost."
And thus to Millie now, as to Pamela when she rode back from her last interview with Warrisden at the village of the three poplars, the riband of white road stretching away in the dusk became a parable.
"Yes," said Tony, "perhaps my path was really the easier one to follow. It was direct and plain."
"Ah," said Millie, "it only seems so because you have traversed it, and are looking back. I do not think it was so simple and direct while you walked upon it." And Tony, remembering the doubts and perplexities which had besieged him, could not but assent.
"I do not think, too, that it was so easy to discover at the beginning."
There rose before Tony's eyes the picture of a ketch-rigged boat sailing at night over a calm sea. A man leaned over the bulwarks, and the bright glare from a lightship ran across the waves and flashed upon his face. Tony remembered the moment very clearly when he had first hit upon his plan; he remembered the weeks of anxiety of which it was the outcome. No, the road had not been easy to find at the beginning. He was silent for a minute, and then he said gently--
"I am sorry that I asked you to tell your story--I am sorry that I did not leave the decision to you. But it shall be as though you told it of your own accord."
The sentence was a concession, no less in the manner of its utterance than in the words themselves. Millie took heart, and told him the whole story of her dealings with Lionel Callon, without excuses and without concealments.
"I seemed to mean so much to him, so little to you," she said. "You see, I did not understand you at all. You were away, too, and he was near. I do not defend myself."