She spoke in a quick, troubled voice, but it did not waver; nor did her eyes once fall from his. The change in her was swift, no doubt. But down there in the _Réserve_, where the lights were out, and the sea echoed through empty rooms, she had had stern and savage teachers. Terror, humiliation, and the spectacle of violence had torn away a veil from before her eyes. She saw her own life in its true perspective. And, that she might see it the more clearly and understand, she had the story of another life wherewith to compare it. It is a quality of big performances, whether in art or life, that while they surprise when first apprehended, they appear upon thought to be so simple that it is astonishing surprise was ever felt. Something of that quality Tony's career possessed. It had come upon Millie as a revelation, yet, now she was thinking: "Yes, that is what Tony would do. How is it I never guessed?" She put him side by side with that other man, the warrior of the drawing-rooms, and she was filled with shame that ever she could have preferred the latter even for a moment of madness. They walked slowly on again. Millie drew her lace wrap more closely about her throat. "Are you cold?" asked Tony. "You are lightly clothed to be talking here. We had better perhaps walk on, and keep what you have to tell me until to-morrow." "No," she answered quickly, "I am not cold. And I must tell you what I have to tell you to-night. I want all this bad, foolish part of my life to end to-night, to be extinguished just as those lights were extinguished a minute since. Only there is something I should like to say to you first." Millie's voice wavered now and broke. "If we do not walk along the road together any more," she went on timidly, "I will still be glad that you came back to-night. I do not know that you will believe that--I do not, indeed, see why you should; but I should very much like you to believe it; for it is the truth. I have learned a good deal, I think, during the last three hours. I would rather go on alone--if it is to be so--in this dim, clean starlight, than ever be back again in the little room with its lights and flowers. Do you understand me?" "I think so," said Tony. "At all events, the road is visible ahead," she went on. "One sees it glimmering, one can keep between the banks; while, in the little lighted room it is easy to get lost." And thus to Millie now, as to Pamela when she rode back from her last interview with Warrisden at the village of the three poplars, the riband of white road stretching away in the dusk became a parable. "Yes," said Tony, "perhaps my path was really the easier one to follow. It was direct and plain." "Ah," said Millie, "it only seems so because you have traversed it, and are looking back. I do not think it was so simple and direct while you walked upon it." And Tony, remembering the doubts and perplexities which had besieged him, could not but assent.