Very strange the part that Ellen played in all this. That odd woman made no further demonstrations of affection; she was always now ironically sarcastic, hurting Millie when she could, and she knew, as no one else in the place did, the way to hurt her. Because of her Bunny came now much less to the house.
"I can't stand that sneering woman," he said, "and she loathes _me_."
"Why do you hate Bunny?" she asked. "He's never done you any harm."
"I hate these mysteries," Millie cried. "Once you asked to be my friend. Now----"
"You seem to want to hurt me any way you can."
Ellen had a habit of standing stiff against the wall, her heels together, her head back as though she were being measured for her height.
"Perhaps I don't like to see you so happy when I'm unhappy myself."
"Why are you unhappy, Ellen? I hate you to be. I do like you. I do want to be your friend if you'll let me. I offended you somehow in the early days. You've never forgiven me for it. But I don't even now know what I did."
"What," she said, "can people like you know about people like us, how we suffer, how we hate ourselves, how we are thirstier and thirstier and for ever unsatisfied. . . . No, I don't mean you any harm. I'll save you from Baxter, though. You're too pretty. . . . You can escape even though I can't."
There was melodrama in this it seemed to Millie. It was quite a relief to have a fierce quarrel with Bunny five minutes later. The quarrel came, of course, from nothing--about some play which was, Bunny said, at Daly's, and Millie at the Lyric.
They were walking furiously down Knightsbridge. An omnibus passed. The play was at the Lyric.
"I'm not coming on with you if you're like that."
"Very well then." He suddenly stepped back to her with his charming air of penitence.
"Millie, I'm sorry. Don't let's fight to-day."
"Well, then, take me to see your mother."
The words seemed not to be hers. At their sudden utterance Knightsbridge, the trees of the Park were carved in coloured stone.
They were walking on again, neither seeing the other.
"You know that I can't. She's down in the country."
"Yes, we can. Now. At once. If you ever want to speak to me again. . . ."
"I tell you--I've told you a thousand times--we must wait. There are reasons----"