The theme of this piece, the chambers within the heart, the soul, immediately put me in mind of Millay's "Bluebeard":
THIS door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed.... Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see.... Look yet again--
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of this room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place.
The interesting thing here is not how Carol used the same theme, but how it was used differently. Millay had a sanctum sanctorum, a private heart of hearts, into which another intrudes; Carol has shown a space to share, to be together, yet in the end, it is left just as barren and empty, if not more so, being put up to "let," like a room in a boarding house, useless without someone else to be inside it.
The quiet speaking voice Carol uses is also deceptively subtle, and a much harder trick of characterization to pull off than Bluebeard's affronted indignation, which while entertaining to read, is more than a bit one-note. Not that drama-queens having a scene aren't actually like that, being fair to Millay, but the nuanced character of Carol's character, and the slowly dawning realizations both about her significant other and herself, are shaded as subtly but definitely as a master watercolor. It's the difference between a rant and an interior monologue; the first is revealing a secret to another, the second is revealing it and admitting it to the self.