"I'll go down now and get on with those letters. You're a darling--too good to me by far."
"I'm a silly old woman," Victoria said, shaking her head. "But I do wish you liked the pink, Millie dear. It will be so nice at night with the lights--so gay."
"We'll have it then," said Millie. "After all, it's your house, isn't it?"
She went downstairs, and then to her amazement found Bunny waiting for her near her desk.
"Why----" Her face flushed with pleasure. How could she help loving him when every inch of him called to her, and touched her with pity and pride and longing and wonder?
"I've come," he began rather sulkily, not looking at her but out of the window, "to apologize for last night. I shouldn't have said what I did. I'm sorry."
How strange that now, when only a moment ago she had loved him so that most likely she would have died for him, the sound of his sulky voice should harden her with a curious, almost impersonal hostility.
"No need to apologize," she said lightly, sitting down at her desk and turning over the letters. "You weren't very nice last night, but last night's last night and this morning's this morning."
"Oh well," he said angrily, still not looking at her, "for the matter of that you weren't especially charming yourself; but of course it's always my fault."
"Need we have it all over again?" she said, her heart beating, her head hot, as though some one were trying to enclose it in a bag. "If I was nasty I'm sorry, and you say you're sorry--so that's over."
He turned towards her angrily. "Of course--if that's all you have to say----" he began.
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---- '"