Millie had then the curious sensation of having passed through, not very long ago, the scene that was now coming. She saw Ellen's thin body, the faded, grey, old-fashioned dress, the sharply cut, pale face with the indignant, protesting eyes; she saw Bunny's sudden turn towards the door, his face hardening as he realized his old and unrelenting enemy, then the quick half-turn that he made towards Millie as though he needed her protection. That touched her, but again strangely she was for a moment outside this, a spectator of the sun-drenched room, of the silly pictures on the wall, of the desk with the litter of papers that even now she was still mechanically handling. Outside it and beyond it, so that she was able to say to herself, "And now Ellen will move to that far window, she'll brush that chair with her skirt, and now she'll say: 'Good-morning, Mr. Baxter. I won't apologize for interrupting because I've wanted this chance—— '"
"Good-morning, Mr. Baxter," Ellen said, turning from the window towards them both with the funny jerky movement that was so especially hers. "I won't apologize for interrupting because I've wanted this chance of speaking to you both together for some time."
Then, at the actual sound of her voice, Millie was pushed in, right in—and with that immersion there was a sudden desperate desire to keep Ellen off, not to hear on any account what she had to say, to postpone it, to answer Bunny's appeal, to do anything rather than to allow things to go as she saw in Ellen's eyes that woman intended them to go.
"Leave us alone for a minute, Ellen," she said. "Bunny and I are in the middle of a scrap."
Standing up by the desk she realized the power that her looks had upon Ellen—her miserable, wretched looks that mattered nothing to her, less than nothing to her at all. She did not realize though that the tears that she had been shedding in Victoria's room had given her eyes a new lustre, that her cheeks were touched to colour with her quarrel with Bunny, and that she stood there holding herself like a young queen—young indeed both in her courage and her fear, in her loyalty and her scorn.
Ellen stared at her as though she were seeing her for the first time.
"Oh well——" she said, suddenly dropping her eyes and turning as though she would go. Then she stopped. "No, why should I? After all, it's for your good that you should know . . . this can't go on. I care for you enough to see that it shan't."
Millie came forward into the centre of the room that was warm with the sun and glowing with light. "Look here, Ellen. We don't want a scene. I'm sick of scenes. I seem to have nothing but scenes now, with Bunny and you and Victoria and every one. If you've really got something to say, say it quickly and let's have it over."