"Oh, you needn't be afraid to speak of him." Millie sat down on the edge of the bed. "I don't know whether I'm happier exactly, but I'm quiet again—and that seems to be almost all I care about now. It's curious though how life arranges things for you. I don't think that I should ever have come out of that miserable loneliness if I hadn't met some one—a woman—whose case was far worse than mine. There's always some one deeper down, I expect, however deep one gets. She took me out of myself. I seem somehow suddenly to have grown up. Do you know, Victoria, when I look back to that first day that I came here I see myself as such a child that I wonder I went out alone."
Victoria nodded her head.
"Yes, you are older. You've grown into a woman in these months; we've all noticed it."
Millie got up. She stretched out her arms, laughing. "Oh! life's wonderful! How any one can be bored I can't think. The things that go on and the people and these wonderful times! Bunny hasn't killed any of that for me. He's increased it, I think. I see now what things other people have to stand. That woman, Victoria, that I spoke of just now, her life! Why, I'm only at the beginning—at the beginning of myself, at the beginning of the world, at the beginning of everything! What a time to be alive in!"
Victoria sighed. "When you talk like that, dear, and look like that it makes me wish I wasn't going to marry Mereward. It's like closing a door. But the enchantment is over for me. Money can't bring it back nor love—not when the youth's gone. Hold on to it, Millie—your youth, my dear. Some people keep it for ever. I think you will."
Millie came and flung her arms round Victoria.
"You've been a dear to me, you have. Don't think I didn't notice how good and quiet you were when all that trouble with Bunny was going on. . . . I love you and wish you the happiest married life any woman could ever have."
A tear trickled down Victoria's fat cheek. "Stay with me, Millie, until you're married. Don't leave us. We shall need your youth and loveliness to lighten us all up. Promise."
And Millie promised.
In the hall she met Ellen.