“But it isn’t to me. I don’t hate her, I’m not jealous, it doesn’t alter one scrap of my love for Phil, but—I don’t know—I feel as though if we talked about it everything would clear away. I’d see then that she was just an ordinary person like anyone else, and I wouldn’t bother about her any more, as it is, simply because I don’t know anything, I imagine things. I don’t know whether Philip thinks of her or not, but I expect that he does, or thinks of my thinking of her, which is the same thing.” “Well, _I’ve_ thought of her!” Millie declared, “again and again. I’ve wondered a thousand things, why she gave Philip up, whether she loves him still, whether she hates his being in love with someone else, whether she writes to him, what she’s like, what she wears.... Doesn’t it prove, Katie, how shut up we’ve always been? Why, even in Paris I never really thought about anybody whom I couldn’t actually see, and life used to seem too simple if you just did the things in front of your nose—and now it’s only the things that aren’t anywhere near you that seem to matter.” Millie said all this as though she were fifty years old at least. It was indeed a real crisis that she should be admitted into the very heart of all this thrilling affair; she was rewarded at last with her flaming desire, that ‘she should share in life.’ It was almost as though she herself had a lover. Katherine waited, then she broke out suddenly: “But it’s all so stupid this. Why can’t things be perfectly simple? Why can’t Philip like them and they like Philip? Why can’t Philip and I marry and spend part of the year here and part of the year away?” “You’ve got to choose,” Millie said, “Mother or Philip—Philip or the family—Philip or Glebeshire. The old life or the new one. You’ve tried to mix it all up. You can’t. Philip can change us. He _is_ changing us all, but mix with us never. If he is forced to, he’ll simply disappear.” “My dear, what’s happened to you?” Katherine cried. “How wise you’ve become! How you’ve grown up!” “I am,” said Millie, with a solemnity that proved that ‘grown-up’ was the last thing that she really was. She sprang to her feet. She spoke as though she were delivering a challenge. “Katie, if you let things go, if you let Mother have her way, one of two things will happen; either Philip won’t be able to stand it and will vanish to Russia, or he’ll endure it, will be smothered by us all, and there’ll only be the corpse left for your enjoyment. “Katie!” Her eyes shone with excitement, her voice quivered with the thrill of her intensity. “You must marry him _now_—whilst you’re in London. You must chuck us all, show Mother that Philip comes before everything, take it into your own hands, send that Russian woman’s ghost back to Russia ... just as Browning and Mrs. Browning did, slip off one day, buy some smelling-salts at the chemist’s and be married!” She laughed. She clapped her hands. “Oh! Katie! Katie!... It’s the only way, the only possible way!”