And with this half-formed criticism of Bunny there came most curiously a more urgent physical longing for him. Before, when he had seemed so utterly perfect, the holding of hands, kisses, embraces could wait. Everything was so safe. But now _was_ everything so safe? If they could quarrel like that at a moment's notice, and he could look suddenly as though he hated her, were they so safe? Bunny himself was changing a little. He was always wanting to kiss her, to lead her into dark corners, to tell her over and over again that he adored her. Their love in these last days had lost some fine quality of sobriety and restraint that it had possessed at first.
There was something in the air of Cladgate with its brass bands, its over-dressed women, its bridge and its dancing.
It is not to be supposed, however, that Millie worried herself very much. Only dimly behind her the sky had changed, thickening ever so slightly. Her sense of enchantment was not pierced.
Ellen arrived and was too sweet for any words.
. . . and do you ever feel, I wonder, that our paths are crossing all the time? It is, I suppose, because we have always been so much together and have done everything together. But I see everything so vividly that it is exactly as though I had been there--Duncombe and the thick woods and the little chapel and the deserted rooms and the boxwood garden. All this here is the very opposite, of course, and yet simply the other half of a necessary whole perhaps. Aren't I getting philosophical? Only I should hate to think that all that you are sharing in now is going out of the world and all this ugliness of mine remains. But of course it won't, and it's up to us, Henry, to see that it doesn't.
Meanwhile, Ellen has arrived and is at present like one of those sugar mice that you buy at the toy-shop--simply too sweet for words. Poor thing, all she needs is for some one to love her passionately and she'll never, never get it. She's quite ready to love some one else passionately and to snatch what she can out of that, but she isn't made for passion--she's so bony and angular and suspicious, and is angry so easily.
I begged Victoria not to say anything about the engagement at present and she hasn't, although it hurts her terribly to keep it in. _Is_'nt it silly to be afraid of Ellen? But I do so _hate_ scenes. So many people seem to like them. Mother cured _us_ of wanting them.