Millie descended from the carriage. Tony looked at her curiously. This sudden arrival at the new home, which was the old, had proved a greater shock to her than he had expected. For a little while after their return to England Millie had dwelt upon the words which Tony had spoken to her in the _Réserve_ by the sea. He had dreamed of buying the house in Deanery Street, of resuming there the life which they had led together there, in the days when they had been good friends as well as good lovers. That dream for a time she had made her own. She had come to long for its fulfilment, as she had never longed for anything else in the world; she had believed that sooner or later Tony would relent, and that it would be fulfilled. But the months had passed, and now, when she had given up hope, unexpectedly it had been fulfilled. She stood upon the pavement, almost dazed. "You never said a word of what you meant to do," she said with a smile, as though excusing herself for her unresponsive manner. The door was open. She went into the house and Tony followed her. They mounted the stairs into the drawing-room. "As far as I could," Tony said, "I had the house furnished just as it used to be. I could not get all the pictures which we once had, but you see I have done my best." Millie looked round the room. There was the piano standing just as it used to do, the carpet, the wall-paper were all of the old pattern. It seemed to her that she had never left the house; that the years in Berkeley Square and Regent's Park were a mere nightmare from which she had just awaked. And then she looked at Tony. No, these latter years had been quite real--he bore the marks of them upon his face. The boyishness had gone. No doubt, she thought, it was the same with her. Tony stood and looked at her with an eagerness which she did not understand. "Are you glad?" he asked earnestly. "Millie, are you pleased?" She stood in front of him with a very serious face. Once a smile brightened it; but it was a smile of doubt, of question. "I am not sure," she said. "I know that you have been very kind. You have done this to please me. But----" And her voice wavered a little. "Well?" said Tony. "But," she went on with difficulty, "I am not sure that I can endure it, unless things are different from what they have been lately. I shall be reminded every minute of other times, and the comparison between those times and the present will be very painful. I think that I shall be very unhappy, much more unhappy than I have ever been, even lately." Her voice sank to a whisper at the end. The little house in Deanery Street, even in her dreams, had been no more than a symbol. She had longed for it as the outward and visible sign of the complete reconciliation on which her heart was set. But to have the sign and to know that it signified nothing--she dreaded that possibility now. Only for a very few moments she dreaded it.