Andrew tells Nina to leave after defending Millie in a confrontation that turns a false accusation into the breaking point of their marriage. Seen from Millie’s perspective, the scene shifts from the threat of being branded a thief to Andrew’s declaration that he no longer loves Nina, and ends with Nina gone and Andrew kissing Millie.

The accusation and Andrew’s intervention

The confrontation begins when Nina claims to have found her clothes in Millie’s closet and accuses her of stealing them. Millie, already anxious that Andrew knows about her prison record, fears that he will believe the accusation and see her as a criminal taking advantage of the household. Nina’s confidence in making the charge is sharpened by the imbalance between employer and employee: she can threaten to call the authorities, while Millie’s denial risks sounding like the word of a convicted person against her employer’s.

Andrew comes out of his office after hearing the commotion and hurries down the stairs. Millie watches his response closely, conscious that his judgment may determine whether she can remain in the home. At first he looks at the clothes and hesitates. Then he recalls the circumstances that Nina’s accusation omits: she had emptied her closet into trash bags and said she intended to donate the garments. He picks up a tiny white dress and points out that Nina had not fit into it for years. His memory of the discarded clothes gives him concrete grounds to reject her story rather than simply choosing Millie’s side without explanation.

Nina responds to his reference to the dress by turning the dispute toward her appearance, asking whether he is calling her fat. Andrew does not follow that diversion. He returns to the central question of why she is targeting Millie, making clear that he understands the accusation as deliberate cruelty rather than a genuine mistake. His defense gives Millie immediate protection from Nina’s threat, but it also makes the conflict between husband and wife impossible to contain as a private disagreement.

From accusation to separation

Andrew’s defense widens into an indictment of the change he believes has taken place in Nina. He tells her that she has become cruel and that he no longer recognizes the person she is. Nina answers that people change, but Andrew rejects that as an adequate explanation for the distance between them. His statement that she is no longer the person he fell in love with places their present conflict against the history of their relationship and turns the clothing dispute into the occasion for naming a much larger estrangement.

He then says he does not think he is in love with Nina anymore and that they should separate. Nina challenges the decision and frames it as his leaving her for their maid, presenting the affair as the explanation that makes his choice humiliating and unreasonable. Andrew acknowledges that he has feelings for Millie, but insists that the separation is about the marriage and his unhappiness within it. The distinction does not remove Millie from the conflict; instead, it shows Andrew attempting to separate his decision to end the marriage from his attraction to her, even as Nina treats the two as inseparable.

Nina threatens to destroy him in court and leave him penniless and homeless. Andrew counters with the circumstances that determine their immediate future: the house was his before they knew one another, Nina has been allowed to live there, and their prenuptial agreement means it will be his again when the marriage ends. He tells her to leave. The exchange changes the balance of the scene. Nina’s threat assumes she can use legal conflict to dispossess him; Andrew’s reply asserts his prior ownership and the protection of the agreement, then converts his decision to separate into an order that she depart.

Nina’s departure and the scene’s reversal

About ten minutes later, Nina comes downstairs carrying a bag on each shoulder. Millie remembers that, the previous day, Nina would have made her carry the bags and laughed at her weakness. Now Nina must manage them herself. Her puffy eyes and disheveled hair make visible the reversal in their positions: the woman who had just accused Millie and threatened to call the authorities is leaving the house under Andrew’s decision, while Millie watches from the stairwell. Nina begs Andrew not to go through with it, but he does not withdraw the separation; he offers instead to help put the bags in her car.

The storm accompanying the confrontation recedes as Nina leaves. Earlier, lightning had illuminated Andrew at the top of the stairs, and thunder punctuated the silence after his judgment of Nina. At the end, the thunder is softer, and Millie imagines she can still hear Nina’s car engine in the distance before recognizing that Nina is gone. The departure is the practical consequence of Andrew’s decision, but the scene does not establish what legal or personal arrangements will follow. Its immediate ending is narrower and more intimate: Andrew draws Millie into a kiss after Nina has left.

Significance and narrative perspective

The event marks a double change for Millie. Andrew publicly rejects Nina’s attempt to cast her as a thief, relying on his own recollection of the donated clothes; then he acknowledges his feelings for Millie while ending his marriage. The defense therefore protects Millie from the accusation and places her relationship with Andrew at the center of the household’s rupture. The kiss confirms the shift in their intimacy, but it follows a separation that Andrew has justified through his unhappiness with Nina, not solely through the affair.

Because the scene is filtered through Millie’s first-person perspective, Andrew’s decision reaches the reader through her fear of being disbelieved, her attention to his expression, and her view of Nina’s departure. Millie is not a detached witness: she wants Andrew to believe her and later responds to his kiss. That perspective makes the separation’s emotional turn vivid while keeping the account anchored to what Millie sees and hears. The false accusation, the remembered donation bags, the prenuptial agreement, and the bags Nina carries downstairs form the scene’s chain of reversals: Millie is defended, the marriage is declared over, and Nina leaves the home she had used to threaten her employee.