Millie looked round the room. There was the piano standing just as it used to do, the carpet, the wall-paper were all of the old pattern. It seemed to her that she had never left the house; that the years in Berkeley Square and Regent's Park were a mere nightmare from which she had just awaked. And then she looked at Tony. No, these latter years had been quite real--he bore the marks of them upon his face. The boyishness had gone. No doubt, she thought, it was the same with her.
Tony stood and looked at her with an eagerness which she did not understand.
"Are you glad?" he asked earnestly. "Millie, are you pleased?"
She stood in front of him with a very serious face. Once a smile brightened it; but it was a smile of doubt, of question.
"I am not sure," she said. "I know that you have been very kind. You have done this to please me. But----" And her voice wavered a little.
"Well?" said Tony.
"But," she went on with difficulty, "I am not sure that I can endure it, unless things are different from what they have been lately. I shall be reminded every minute of other times, and the comparison between those times and the present will be very painful. I think that I shall be very unhappy, much more unhappy than I have ever been, even lately."
Her voice sank to a whisper at the end. The little house in Deanery Street, even in her dreams, had been no more than a symbol. She had longed for it as the outward and visible sign of the complete reconciliation on which her heart was set. But to have the sign and to know that it signified nothing--she dreaded that possibility now. Only for a very few moments she dreaded it.
"I don't think I can endure it, Tony," she said sadly. And the next moment his arms were about her, and her head was resting against his breast.
"Millie!" he cried in a low voice; and again "Millie!"