"Never mind, Tony," she said. "Some day we shall look back on all of it--this house and the empty rooms and the quarrels"--she hesitated for a second--"Yes, and the library door; we shall look back on it all and laugh."
"Shall we?" said Tony, suddenly. His face was most serious, his voice most doubtful.
"Why, what do you mean?" asked Millie. Then she added reassuringly, "It must end some time. Oh yes, it can't last for ever."
"No," replied Tony; "but it can last just long enough."
"Long enough for what?"
"Long enough to spoil both our lives altogether."
He was speaking with a manner which was quite strange to her. There was a certainty in his voice, there was a gravity too. He had ceased to leave the remedy of their plight to time and chance, since, through two years, time and chance had failed them. He had been seriously thinking, and as the result of thought he had come to definite conclusions. Millie understood that there was much more behind the words he had spoken and that he meant to say that much more to her to-night. She was suddenly aware that she was face to face with issues momentous to both of them. She began to be a little afraid. She looked at Tony almost as if he were a stranger.
"Tony," she said faintly, in deprecation.
"We must face it, Millie," he went on steadily. "This life of ours here in this house will come to an end, of course, but how will it leave us, you and me? Soured, embittered, quarrelsome, or no longer quarrelsome, but just indifferent to each other, bored by each other?" He was speaking very slowly, choosing each word with difficulty.
"Oh no," Millie protested.