[NEWS OF TONY]
The promise which Pamela had given was a great relief to Tony; he went about the work of preparing for his departure with an easier mind. It was even in his thoughts when he stood with his wife upon the platform of Euston station, five minutes before his train started for Liverpool.
"She will be a good friend, Millie," he said. "Count on her till I send for you. I think I am right to go, even though I don't understand----"
He checked himself abruptly. Millie, however, paid heed only to the first clause of his sentence.
"Of course you are right," she said, with a confidence which brought an answering smile to his face.
She watched the red tail-light of the train until it disappeared, and drove home alone to the big dreary house. It seemed ten times more dreary, ten times more silent than ever before. She was really alone now. But her confidence in herself and in Tony was still strong. "I can wait," she said, and the consciousness of her courage rejoiced her. She walked from room to room and sat for a few moments in each, realising that the coldness, the dingy look of the furniture, and the empty silence had no longer the power to oppress her. She even hesitated at the library door with her fingers on the key. But it was not until the next day that she unlocked it and threw it open.
For Pamela, mindful of her promise, called in the afternoon. Millicent was still uplifted by her confidence.
"I can wait quite patiently," she said; and Pamela scrutinised her with some anxiety. For Millicent was speaking feverishly, as though she laboured under an excitement. Was her courage the mere effervescence of that excitement, or was it a steady, durable thing? Pamela led her friend on to speak of the life which she and Tony had led in the big house, sounding her the while so that she might come upon some answer to that question. And thus it happened that, as they came down the stairs together, Millicent again stopped before the library door.
"Look!" she said. "This room always seemed to me typical of the whole house, typical too of the lives we led in it."
She unlocked the door suddenly and flung it open. The floor of the library was below the level of the hall, and a smooth plane of wood sloped down to it very gradually from the threshold.