The first of Madame von Marwitz's great concerts was given on Friday, and Karen spent the whole of that day and of Saturday with her, summoned by an urgent telephone message early in the morning. On Sunday she was still secluded in her rooms, and Miss Scrotton, breaking in determinedly upon her, found her lying prone upon the sofa, Karen beside her.

"I cannot see you, my Scrotton," said Madame von Marwitz, with kindly yet listless decision. "Did they not tell you below that I was seeing nobody? Karen is with me to watch over my ill-temper. She is a soothing little milk-poultice and I can bear nothing else. I am worn out."

Before poor Miss Scrotton's brow of gloom Karen suggested that she should herself go down to Mrs. Forrester for tea and leave her place to Miss Scrotton, but, with a weary shake of the head, Madame von Marwitz rejected the proposal. "No; Scrotton is too intelligent for me to-day," she said. "You will go down to Mrs. Forrester for your tea, my Scrotton, and wait for another day to see me."

Miss Scrotton went down nearly in tears.

"She refused to see Sir Alliston," Mrs. Forrester said, soothingly. "She really is fit for nothing. I have never seen her so exhausted."

"Yet Karen Jardine always manages to force her way in," said Miss Scrotton, controlling the tears with difficulty. "She has absolutely taken possession of Mercedes. It really is almost absurd, such devotion, and in a married woman. Gregory doesn't like it at all. Oh, I know it. Betty Jardine gave me a hint only yesterday of how matters stand."

"Lady Jardine has always seemed to me a rather trivial little person. I should not accept her impression of a situation," said Mrs. Forrester. "Mercedes sends for Karen constantly. And I am sure that Gregory is glad to think that she can be of use to Mercedes."

"Oh, Betty Jardine thinks, too, that it is Mercedes who takes Karen from her husband. But I really can't agree with her, or with you, dear Mrs. Forrester, there. Mercedes is simply too indolent and kind-hearted to defend herself from the sort of habit the girl has imposed upon her. As for Gregory being grateful I can only assure you that you are entirely mistaken. My own impression is that he is beginning to dislike Mercedes. Oh, he is a very jealous temperament; I have always felt it in him. He is one of those cold, passionate men who become the most infatuated and tyrannical of husbands."

"My dear Eleanor," Mrs. Forrester raised her eyebrows. "I see no sign of tyranny. He allows Karen to come here constantly."

"Yes; because he knows that to refuse would be to endanger his relation to her. Mercedes is angelic to him of course, and doesn't give him a chance for making things difficult for Karen. But it is quite obvious to me that he hates the whole situation."

"I hope not," said Mrs. Forrester, gravely now. "I hope not. It would be tragical indeed if this last close relation in Mercedes's life were to be spoiled for her. I could not forgive Gregory if he made it difficult in any way for Karen to be with her guardian."

"Well, as long as he can conceal his jealousy, Mercedes will manage, I suppose, to keep things smooth. But I can't see it as you do, Mrs. Forrester. I can't believe for a moment that Mercedes needs Karen or that the tie is such a close one. She only likes to see her now because she is bored and impatient and unhappy, and Karen is—she said it just now, before the girl—a poultice for her nerves. And the reason for her nerves isn't far to seek. I must be frank with you, dear Mrs. Forrester; you know I always have been, and I'm distressed, deeply distressed about Mercedes. She expected Claude Drew to be back from America by now and I heard yesterday from that horrid young friend of his, Algernon Bently, that he has again postponed his return. It's that that agonizes and infuriates Mercedes, it's that that makes her unwilling to be alone with me. I've seen too much; I know too much; she fears me, Mrs. Forrester. She knows that I know that Claude Drew is punishing her now for having snubbed him in America."

"My dear Eleanor," Mrs. Forrester murmured distressfully. "You exaggerate that young man's significance."

"Dear Mrs. Forrester," Miss Scrotton returned, almost now with a solemn exasperation, "I wish it were possible to exaggerate it. I watched it grow. His very effrontery fascinates her. We know, you and I, what Mercedes expects in devotion from a man who cares for her. They must adore her on their knees. Now Mr. Drew adored standing nonchalantly on his feet and looking coolly into her eyes. She resented it; she had constantly to put him in his place. But she would rather have him out of his place than not have him there at all. That is what she is feeling now. That is why she is so worn out. She is wishing that Claude Drew would come back from America, and she is wanting to write one letter to his ten and finding that she writes five. He writes to her constantly, I suppose?"

"I believe he does," Mrs. Forrester conceded. "Mercedes is quite open about the frequency of his letters. I am sure that you exaggerate, Eleanor. He interests her, and he charms her if you will. Like every woman, she is aware of devotion and pleased by it. I don't believe it's anything more."

"I believe," said Miss Scrotton, after a moment, and with resolution, "that it's a great passion; the last great passion of her life."

"Oh, my dear!"

"A great passion," Miss Scrotton persisted, "and for a man whom she knows not to be in any way her equal. It is that that exasperates her."

Mrs. Forrester meditated for a little while and then, owning to a certain mutual recognition of facts, she said: "I don't believe that it's a great passion; but I think that a woman like Mercedes, a genius of that scope, needs always to feel in her life the elements of a 'situation'—and life always provides such women with a choice of situations. They are stimulants. Mr. Drew and his like, with whatever unrest and emotion they may cause her, nourish her art. Even a great passion would be a tempest that filled her sails and drove her on; in the midst of it she would never lose the power of steering. She has essentially the strength and detachment of genius. She watches her own emotions and makes use of them. Did you ever hear her play more magnificently than on Friday? If Mr. Drew y était pour quelque chose, it was in the sense that she made mincemeat of him and presented us in consequence with a magnificent sausage."

Miss Scrotton, who had somewhat forgotten her personal grievance in the exhilaration of these analyses, granted the sausage and granted that Mercedes made mincemeat of Mr. Drew—and of her friends into the bargain. "But my contention and my fear is," she said, "that he will make mincemeat of her before he is done with her."

Miss Scrotton did not rank highly for wisdom in Mrs. Forrester's estimation; but for her perspicacity and intelligence she had more regard than she cared to admit. Echoes of Eleanor's distrusts and fears remained with her, and, though it was but a minor one, such an echo vibrated loudly on Monday afternoon when Betty Jardine appeared at tea-time with Karen.

It was the afternoon that Karen had promised to Betty, and when this fact had been made known to Tante it was no grievance and no protest that she showed, only a slight hesitation, a slight gravity, and then, as if with cheerful courage in the face of an old sadness: "Eh bien," she said. "Bring her back here to tea, ma chérie. So I shall come to know this new friend of my Karen's better."

Betty was not at all pleased at being brought back to tea. But Karen asked her so gravely and prettily and said so urgently that Tante wanted especially to know her better, and asked, moreover, if Betty would let her come to lunch with her instead of tea, so that they should have their full time together, that Betty once more pocketed her suspicions of a design on Madame von Marwitz's part. The suspicion was there, however, in her pocket, and she kept her hand on it rather as if it were a small but efficacious pistol which she carried about in case of an emergency. Betty was one who could aim steadily and shoot straight when occasion demanded. It was a latent antagonist who entered Mrs. Forrester's drawing-room on that Monday afternoon, Karen, all guileless, following after. Mrs. Forrester and the Baroness were alone and, in a deep Chesterfield near the tea-table, Madame von Marwitz leaned an arm, bared to the elbow, in cushions and rested a meditative head on her hand. She half rose to greet Betty. "This is kind of you, Lady Jardine," she said. "I feared that I had lost my Karen for the afternoon. Elle me manque toujours; she knows that." Smiling up at Karen she drew her down beside her, studying her with eyes of fond, maternal solicitude. "My child looks well, does she not, Mrs. Forrester? And the pretty hat! I am glad not to see the foolish green one."

"Oh, I like the green one very much, Tante," said Karen. "But you shall not see it again."

"I hope I'm to see it again," said Betty, turning over her pistol. "I chose it, you know."

Madame von Marwitz turned startled eyes upon her. "Ah—but I did not know. Did you tell me this, Karen?" the eyes of distress now turned to Karen. "Have I forgotten? Was the green hat, the little green hat with the wing, indeed of Lady Jardine's choosing? Have I been so very rude?"

"Betty will understand, Tante," said Karen—while Mrs. Forrester, softly chinking among her blue Worcester teacups, kept a cogitating eye on Betty Jardine—"that I have so many new hats now that you must easily forget which is which."

"All I ask," said Betty, laughing over her mishap, "is that I, sometimes, may see Karen in the green hat, for I think it charming."

"Indeed, Betty, so do I," said Karen, smiling.

"And I must be forgiven for not liking the green hat," Madame von Marwitz returned.

Betty and Karen were supplied with tea, and after they had selected their cakes, and a few inconsequent remarks had been exchanged, Madame von Marwitz said:

"And now, my Karen, I have a little plan to tell you of; a little treat that I have arranged for you. We are to go together, on this next Saturday, to stay at Thole Castle with my friends the Duke and Duchess of Bannister. I have told them that I wish to bring my child."

"But how delightful, Tante. It is to be in the country? We shall be there, you and I and Gregory, till Monday?"

"I thought that I should please you. Yes; till Monday. And in beautiful country. But it is to be our own small treat; yours and mine. Your husband will lend you to me for those two days." Holding the girl's hand Madame von Marwitz smiled indulgently at her, with eyes only for her. Betty, however, was listening.

"But cannot Gregory come, too, Tante?" Karen questioned, her pleasure dashed.

"These friends of mine, my Karen," said Madame von Marwitz, "have heard of you as mine only. It is as my child that you will come with me; just as it is as your husband's wife that you see his friends. That is quite clear, quite happy, quite understood."

Karen's eyes now turned on Betty. They did not seek counsel, they asked no question of Betty; but they gave her, in their slight bewilderment, her opportunity.

"But Karen, I think you are right," so she took up the gage that Madame von Marwitz had flung. "I don't think that you must accept this invitation without, at least, consulting Gregory."

Madame von Marwitz did not look at her. She continued to gaze as serenely at Karen as though Betty were a dog that had barked irrelevantly from the hearth-rug. But Karen fixed widened eyes upon her.

"I do not need to consult Gregory, Betty," she said. "We have, I know, no engagements for this Saturday to Monday, and he will be delighted for me that I am to go with Tante."

"That may be, my dear," Betty returned with a manner as imperturbable as Madame von Marwitz's; "but I think that you should give him an opportunity of saying so. He may not care for his wife to go to strangers without him."

"They are not strangers. They are friends of Tante's."

"Gregory may not care for you to make—as Madame von Marwitz suggests—a different set of friends from his own."

"If they become my friends they will become his," said Karen.

During this little altercation, Madame von Marwitz, large and white, her profile turned to Betty, sat holding Karen's hand and gazing at her with an almost slumbrous melancholy.

Mrs. Forrester, controlling her displeasure with some difficulty, interposed. "I don't think Lady Jardine really quite understands the position, Karen," she said. "It isn't the normal one, Lady Jardine. Madame von Marwitz stands, really, to Karen in a mother's place."

"Oh, but I can't agree with you, Mrs. Forrester," Betty replied. "Madame von Marwitz doesn't strike me as being in the least like Karen's mother. And she isn't Karen's mother. And Karen's husband, now, should certainly stand first in her life."

A silence followed the sharp report. Mrs. Forrester's and Karen's eyes had turned on the Baroness who sat still, as though her breast had received the shot. With tragic eyes she gazed out above Karen's head; then: "It is true," she said in a low voice, as though communing with herself; "I am indeed alone." She rose. With the slow step of a Niobe she moved down the room and disappeared.

"I do not forgive you for this, Betty," said Karen, following her guardian. Betty, like a naughty school-girl, was left confronting Mrs. Forrester across the tea-table.

"Lady Jardine," said the old lady, fixing her bright eyes on her guest, "I don't think you can have realised what you were saying. Madame von Marwitz's isolation is one of the many tragedies of her life, and you have made it clear to her."

"I'm very sorry," said Betty. "But I feel what Madame von Marwitz is doing to be so mistaken, so wrong."

"These formalities don't obtain nowadays, especially if a wife is so singularly related to a woman like Madame von Marwitz. And Mercedes is quite above all such little consciousnesses, I assure you. She is not aware of sets, in that petty way. It is merely a treat she is giving the child, for she knows how much Karen loves to be with her. And it is only in her train that Karen goes."

"Precisely." Betty had risen and stood smoothing her muff and not feigning to smile. "In her train. I don't think that Gregory's wife should go in anybody's train."

"It was markedly in Mercedes's train that he found her."

"All the more reason for wishing now to withdraw her from it. Karen has become something more than Madame von Marwitz's panache."

Mrs. Forrester at this fixed Betty very hard and echoes of Miss Scrotton rang loudly. "You must let me warn you, Lady Jardine," she said, "that you are making a position, difficult already for Mercedes, more difficult still. It would be a grievous thing if Karen were to recognize her husband's jealousy. I'm afraid I can't avoid seeing what you have made so plain to-day, that Gregory is trying to undermine Karen's relation to her guardian."

At this Betty had actually to laugh. "But don't you see that it is simply the other way round?" she said. "It is Madame von Marwitz who is trying to undermine Karen's relation to Gregory. It is she who is jealous. It's that I can't avoid seeing."

"I don't think we have anything to gain by continuing this conversation," Mrs. Forrester replied. "May I give you some more tea before you go?"

"No, thanks. Is Karen coming with me, I wonder? We had arranged that I was to take her home."

Mrs. Forrester rang the bell and she and Betty stood in an uneasy silence until the man returned to say that Mrs. Jardine was to spend the evening with Madame von Marwitz who had suddenly been taken very ill.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" Mrs. Forrester almost moaned. "This means one of her terrible headaches and we were to have dined out. I must telephone excuses at once."

"I wish I hadn't had to make you think me such a pig," said Betty.

"I don't think you a pig," said Mrs. Forrester, "but I do think you a very mistaken and a very unwise woman. And I do beg you, for Gregory and for Karen's sake, to be careful what you do."

"I'm afraid you think that I've made a dreadful mess of things, Gregory. I simply couldn't help myself," said Betty, half an hour later. "If only she hadn't gone on gazing at Karen in that aggressive way I might have curbed my tongue, and if only, afterwards, Mrs. Forrester hadn't shown herself such an infatuated partisan. But I'm afraid she was right in saying that I was an unwise woman. Certainly I haven't made things easier for you, unless you want a situation nette. It's there to your hand if you do want it, and in your place I should. It was a challenge she gave, you know, to you through me. After the other night there was no mistaking it. I should forbid Karen to go on Saturday."

Gregory stood before her still wearing his overcoat, for they had driven up simultaneously to the door below, his hands in his pockets and eyes of deep cogitation fixed on his sister-in-law. He was inclined to think that she had made a dreadful mess of things; yet, at the same time, he was feeling a certain elation in the chaos thus created.

"You advise me to declare war on Madame von Marwitz?" he inquired. "Come; the situation is hardly nette enough to warrant that; what?"

"Ah; you do see it then!" Betty from the sofa where she sat erect, her hands in her muff, almost joyfully declared. "You do see, then, what she is after!"

He didn't intend to let Betty see what he saw, if that were now possible. "She's after Karen, of course; but why not? It's a jealous and exacting affection, that is evident; but as long as Karen cares to satisfy it I'm quite pleased that she should. I can't declare war on Madame von Marwitz, Betty, even if I wanted to. Because, if she is fond of Karen, Karen is ten times fonder of her."

"Expose her to Karen!" Betty magnificently urged. "You can I'm sure. You're been seeing things more and more clearly, just as I have; you've been seeing that Madame von Marwitz, as far as her character goes, is a fraud. Trip her up. Have things out. Gregory, I warn you, she's a dangerous woman, and Karen is a very simple one."

"But that's just it, my dear Betty. If Karen is too simple to see, now, that she's dangerous, how shall I make her look so? It's I who'll look the jealous idiot Mrs. Forrester thinks me," Gregory half mused to himself. "And, besides, I really don't know that I should want to trip her up. I don't know that I should like to have Karen disillusioned. She's a fraud if you like, and Karen, as I say, is ten times fonder of her than she is of Karen; but she is fond of Karen; I do believe that. And she has been a fairy-godmother to her. And they have been through all sorts of things together. No; their relationship is one that has its rights. I see it, and I intend to make Madame von Marwitz feel that I see it. So that my only plan is to go on being suave and acquiescent."

"Well; you may have to sacrifice me, then. Karen is indignant with me, I warn you."

"I'm a resourceful person, Betty. I shan't sacrifice you. And you must be patient with Karen."

Betty, who had risen, stood for a moment looking at the Bouddha. "Patient? I should think so. She is the one I'm sorriest for. Are you going to keep that ridiculous thing in here permanently, Gregory?"

"It's symbolic, isn't it?" said Gregory. "It will stay here, I suppose, as long as Madame von Marwitz and Karen go on caring for each other. With all my griefs and suspicions I hope that the Bouddha is a fixture."

He felt, after Betty had gone, that he had burned a good many of his boats in thus making her, to some extent, his confidant. He had confessed that he had griefs and suspicions, and that, in itself, was to involve still further his relation to his wife. But he had kept from Betty how grave were his grounds for suspicion. The bearing away of Karen to the ducal week-end wasn't really, in itself, so alarming an incident; but, as a sequel to Madame von Marwitz's parting declaration of the other evening, her supremely insolent, "I must see what I can do," it became sinister and affected him like the sound of a second, more prolonged, more reverberating clash upon the gong. To submit was to show himself in Madame von Marwitz's eyes as contemptibly supine; to protest was to appear in Karen's as meanly petty.

His reflections were interrupted by the ringing of the telephone and when he went to it Karen's voice told him that she was spending the evening with Tante, who was ill, and that she would not be back till ten. Something chill and authoritative in the tones affected him unpleasantly. Karen considered that she had a grievance and perhaps suspected him of being its cause. After all, he thought, hanging up the receiver with some abruptness, there was such a thing as being too simple. One had, indeed, to be very patient with her. And one thing he promised himself whatever came of it; he wasn't going to sacrifice Betty by one jot or tittle to his duel with Madame von Marwitz.

It was past ten when Karen returned and his mood of latent hostility melted when he saw how tired she looked and how unhappy. She, too, had steeled herself in advance against something that she expected to find in him and he was thankful to feel that she wouldn't find it. She was to find him suave and acquiescent; he would consent without a murmur to Madame von Marwitz's plan for the week-end.

"Darling, I'm so sorry that she's ill, your guardian," he said, taking her hat and coat from her as she sank wearily on the sofa. "How is she now?"

She looked up at him in the rosy light of the electric lamps and her face showed no temporizing recognitions or gratitudes. "Gregory," she said abruptly, "do you mind—does it displease you—if I go with Tante next Saturday to stay with some friends of hers?"

"Mind? Why should I?" said Gregory, standing before her with his hands in his pockets. "I'd rather have you here, of course. I've been feeling a little deserted lately. But I want you to do anything that gives you pleasure."

She studied him. "Betty thought it a wrong thing for me to do. She hurt Tante's feelings deeply this afternoon. She spoke as if she had some authority to come between you and me and between me and Tante. I am very much displeased with her," said Karen, with her strangely mature decision.

The moment had come, decisively, not to sacrifice Betty. "Betty sees things more conventionally and perhaps more wisely," he said, "than you or I—or Madame von Marwitz, even, perhaps. She feels a sense of responsibility towards you—and towards me. Anything she said she meant kindly, I'm sure."

Karen listened carefully as though mastering herself. "Responsibility towards me? Why should she? I feel none towards her."

"But, my dear child, that wouldn't be in your place," he could not control the ironic note. "You are a younger woman and a much more inexperienced one. It's merely as if you'd married into a family where there was an elder sister to look after you."

Karen's eyes dwelt on him and her face was cold, rocky. "Do you forget, as she does, that I have still with me a person who, for years, has looked after me, a person older still and more experienced still than the little Betty? I don't need any guidance from your sister; for I have my guardian to tell me, as she always has, what is best for me to do. It is impertinent of Betty to imagine that she has any right to interfere. And she was more than impertinent. I had not wished to tell you; but you must understand that Betty has been insolent."

"Come, Karen; don't use such unsuitable words. Hasty perhaps; not insolent. Betty herself has told me all about it."

A steely penetration came to Karen's eyes. "She has told you? She has been here?"

"Yes."

"She complained of Tante to you?"

"She thinks her wrong."

"And you; you think her wrong?"

Gregory paused and looked at the young girl on the sofa, his wife. There was that in her attitude, exhausted yet unappealing, in her face, weary yet implacable, which, while it made her seem pitiful to him, made her also almost a stranger; this armed hostility towards himself, who loved her, this quickness of resentment, this cold assurance of right. He could understand and pity; but he, too, was tired and overwrought. What had he done to deserve such a look and such a tone from her except endure, with unexampled patience, the pressure upon his life, soft, unremitting, sinister, of something hateful to him and menacing to their happiness? What, above all, was his place in this deep but narrow young heart? It seemed filled with but one absorbing preoccupation, one passion of devotion.

He turned from her and went to the mantelpiece, and shifting the vases upon it as he spoke, remembering with a bitter upper layer of consciousness how Madame von Marwitz's blighting gaze had rested upon these ornaments in her first visit;—"I'm not going to discuss your guardian with you, Karen," he said; "I haven't said that I thought her wrong. I've consented that you should do as she wishes. You have no right to ask anything more of me. I certainly am not going to be forced by you into saying that I think Betty wrong. If you are not unfair to Betty you are certainly most unfair to me and it seems to me that it is your tendency to be fair to one person only. I'm in no danger of forgetting her control and guidance of your life, I assure you. If you were to let me forget it, she wouldn't. She is showing me now—after telling me the other night what she thought of my monde—how she controls you. It's very natural of her, no doubt, and very natural of you to feel her right; and I submit. So that you have no ground of grievance against me." He turned to her again. "And now I think you had better go to bed. You look very tired. I've some work to get through, so I'll say good-night to you, Karen dear."

She rose with a curious automatic obedience, and, coming to him, lifted her forehead, like a child, for his kiss. Her face showed, perhaps, a bleak wonder, but it showed no softness. She might be bewildered by this sudden change in their relation, but she was not weakened. She went away, softly closing the door behind her.

In their room, Karen stood for a moment before undressing and looked about her. Something had happened, and though she could not clearly see what it was it seemed to have altered the aspect of everything, so that this pretty room, full of light and comfort, was strange to her. She felt an alien in it; and as she looked round it she thought of how her little room at Les Solitudes where, with such an untroubled heart, she had slept and waked for so many years.

Three large photographs of Tante hung on the walls, and their eyes met hers as if with an unfaltering love and comprehension. And on the dressing-table was a photograph of Gregory; the new thing in her life; the thing that menaced the old. She went and took it up, and Gregory's face, too, was suddenly strange to her; cold, hard, sardonic. She wondered, gazing at it, that she had never seen before how cold and hard it was. Quickly undressing she lay down and closed her eyes. A succession of images passed with processional steadiness before her mind; the carriage in the Forest of Fontainebleau and Tante in it looking at her; Tante in the hotel at Fontainebleau, her arm around the little waif, saying: "But it is a Norse child; her name and her hair and her eyes;" Tante's dreadful face as she tottered back to Karen's arms from the sight at the lake-edge; Tante that evening lying white and sombre on her pillows with eyelids pressed down as if on tears, saying: "Do they wish to take my child, too, from me?"

Then came the other face, the new face; like a sword; thrusting among the sacred visions. Consciously she saw her husband's face now, as she had often, with a half wilful unconsciousness, seen it, looking at Tante—ah, a fierce resentment flamed up in her at last with the unavoidable clearness of her vision—looking at Tante with a courteous blankness that cloaked hostility; with cold curiosity; with mastered irony, suspicion, dislike. He was, then, a man not generous, not large and wise of heart, a man without the loving humour that would have enabled him to see past the defects and flaws of greatness, nor with the heart and mind to recognize and love it when he saw it. He was petty, too, and narrow, and arrogantly sure of his own small measures. Her memories heaped themselves into the overwhelming realisation. She was married to a man who was hostile to what—until he had come—had been the dearest thing in her life. She had taken to her heart something that killed its very pulse. How could she love a man who looked such things at Tante—who thought such things of Tante? How love him without disloyalty to the older tie? Already her forbearance, her hiding from him of her fear, had been disloyalty, a cowardly acquiescence in something that, from the first hint of it, she should openly have rebelled against. Slow flames of shame and anger burned her. How could she not hate him? But how could she not love him? He was part of her life, as unquestionably, as indissolubly, as Tante.

Then, the visions crumbling, the flames falling, a chaos of mere feeling overwhelmed her. It was as though her blood were running backward, knotting itself in clots of darkness and agony. He had sent her away unlovingly—punishing her for her fidelity. Her love for Tante destroyed his love for her. He must have known her pain; yet he could speak like that to her; look like that. The tears rose to her eyes and rolled down her cheeks as she lay straightly in the bed, on her back, the clothes drawn to her throat, her hands clasped tightly on her breast. Hours had passed and here she lay alone.

Hours had passed and she heard at last his careful step along the passage, and the shock of it tingled through her with a renewal of fear and irrepressible joy. He opened, carefully, the dressing-room door. She listened, stilling her breaths.

He would come to her. They would speak together. He would not leave her when she was so unhappy. Even the thought of Tante's wrongs was effaced by the fear and yearning, and, as the bedroom door opened and Gregory came in, her heart seemed to lift and dissolve in a throb of relief and blissfulness.

But, with her joy, the thought of Tante hovered like a heavy darkness above her eyes, keeping them closed. She lay still, ashamed of so much gladness, yet knowing that if he took her in his arms her arms could but close about him.

The stillness deceived Gregory. In the dim light from the dressing-room he saw her, as he thought, sleeping placidly, her broad braids lying along the sheet.

He looked at her for a moment. Then, not stooping to her, he turned away.

If only, Gregory often felt, in thinking it over and over in the days of outer unity and inner estrangement that followed, she had not been able to go to sleep so placidly.

All resentment had faded from his heart when he went in to her. He had longed for reconciliation and for reassurance. But as he had looked at the seeming calm of Karen's face his tenderness and compunction passed into a bitter consciousness of frustrated love. Her calm was like a repulse. Their personal estrangement and misunderstanding left her unmoved. She had said what she had to say to him; she had vindicated her guardian; and now she slept, unmindful of him. He asked himself, and for the first time clearly and steadily, as he lay awake for hours afterwards in the little dressing-room bed, whether Karen's feelings for him passed beyond a faithful, sober affection that took him for granted, unhesitatingly and uncritically, as a new asset in a life dedicated elsewhere. Romance for her was personified in Tante, and her husband was a creature of mere kindly domesticity. It was to think too bitterly of Karen's love for him to see it thus, he knew, even while the torment grasped him; but the pressure of his own love for her, the loveliness, the romance that she so supremely personified for him, surged too strongly against the barrier of her mute, unanswering face, for him to feel temperately and weigh fairly. There was a lack in her, and because of it she hurt him thus cruelly.

They met next morning over a mutual misinterpretation, and, with a sense of mingled discord and relief, found themselves kissing and smiling as if nothing had happened. Pride sustained them; the hope that, since the other seemed so unconscious, a hurt dealt so unconsciously need not, for pride's sake, be resented; the fear that explanation or protest might emphasise estrangement. The easiest thing to do was to go on acting as if nothing had happened. Karen poured out his coffee and questioned him about the latest political news. He helped her to eggs and bacon and took an interest in her letters.

And since it was easiest to begin so, it was easiest so to go on. The routine of their shared life blurred for them the sharp realisations of the night. But while the fact that such suffering had come to them was one that could, perhaps, be lived down, the fact that they did not speak of it spread through all their life with a strange, new savour.

Karen went to her ducal week-end; but she did not, when she came back from it, regale her husband with her usual wealth of detailed description. She could no longer assume the air of happy confidence where Tante and her doings with Tante were concerned. That air of determined cheerfulness, that pretence that nothing was really the matter and that Tante and Gregory were bound to get on together if she took it for granted that they would, had broken down. There was relief for Gregory, though relief of a chill, grey order, in seeing that Karen had accepted the fact that he and Tante were not to get on. Yet he smarted from the new sense of being shut out from her life.

It was he who assumed the air; he who pretended that nothing was the matter. He questioned her genially about the visit, and Karen answered all his questions as genially. Yes; it had been very nice; the great house sometimes very beautiful and sometimes very ugly; the beauty seemed, in a funny way, almost as accidental as the ugliness. The people had been very interesting to look at; so many slender pretty women; there were no fat women and no ugly women at all, or, if they were, they contrived not to look it. It all seemed perfectly arranged.

Had she talked to many of them? Gregory asked. Had she come across anybody she liked? Karen shook her head. She had liked them all—to look at—but it had gone no further than that; she had talked very little with any of them; and, soberly, unemphatically, she had added: "They were all too much occupied with Tante—or with each other—to think much of me. I was the only one not slender and not beautiful!"

Gregory asked who had taken her in to dinner on the two nights, and masked ironic inner comments when he heard that on Saturday it had been a young actor who, she thought, had been a little cross at having her as his portion. "He didn't try to talk to me; nor I to him, when I found that he was cross," she said. "I didn't like him at all. He had fat cheeks and very shrewd black eyes." On Sunday it had been a young son of the house, a boy at Eton. "Very, very dear and nice. We had a great talk about climbing Swiss mountains, which I have done a good deal, you know."

Tante, it appeared, had had the ambassador on Saturday and the Duke himself on Sunday. And she and Tante, as usual, had had great fun in their own rooms every night, talking everybody over when the day was done. Karen said nothing to emphasise the contrast between the duke's friends and Gregory's, but she couldn't have failed to draw her comparison. Here was a monde where Tante was fully appreciated. That she herself had not been was not a matter to engage her thoughts. But it engaged Gregory's. The position in which she had been placed was a further proof to him of Tante's lack of consideration. Where Karen was placed depended, precisely, he felt sure of it, on where Madame von Marwitz wished her to be placed. It was as the little camp-follower that she had taken her.

After this event came a pause in the fortunes of our young couple. Madame von Marwitz, with Mrs. Forrester, went to Paris to give her two concerts there and was gone for a fortnight. In this fortnight he and Karen resumed, though warily, as it were, some old customs. They read their political economy again in the evenings when they did not go out, and he found her at tea-time waiting for him as she had used to do. She shared his life; she was gentle and thoughtful; yet she had never been less near. He felt that she guarded herself against admissions. To come near now would be to grant that it had been Tante's presence that had parted them.

She wrote to Madame von Marwitz, and heard from her, constantly. Madame von Marwitz sent her presents from Paris; a wonderful white silk dressing-gown; a box of chocolate; a charming bit of old enamel picked up in a rive gauche curiosity shop. Then one day she wrote to say that Tallie had been quite ill—povera vecchia—and would Karen be a kind, kind child and run down and see her at Les Solitudes.

Gregory had not forgotten the plan for having Mrs. Talcott with them that winter and had reminded Karen of it, but it appeared then that she had not forgotten, either; had indeed, spoken to Tante of it; but that Tante had not seemed to think it a good plan. Tante said that Mrs. Talcott did not like leaving Les Solitudes; and, moreover, that she herself, might be going down there for the inside of a week at any moment and Karen knew how Tallie would hate the idea of not being on the spot to prepare for her. Let them postpone the idea of a visit; at all events until she was no longer in England.

Gregory now suggested that Karen might bring Mrs. Talcott back with her. There was some guile in the suggestion. Encircling this little oasis of peace where he and Karen could, at all events, draw their breaths, were storms and arid wastes. Madame von Marwitz would soon be back. She might even be thinking of redeeming her promise of coming to stay with them. If old Mrs. Talcott, slightly invalided, could be installed before the great woman's return, she might keep her out for the rest of her stay in London, and must, certainly, keep Karen in to a greater extent than when she had no guest to entertain.

Karen could not suspect his motive; he saw that from her frank look of pleasure. She promised to do her best. It was worth while, he reflected, to lose her for a few days if she were to bring back such a bulwark as Mrs. Talcott might prove herself to be. And, besides, he would be sincerely glad to see the old woman. The thought of her gave him a sense of comfort and security.

He saw Karen off next morning. She was to be at Les Solitudes for three or four days, and on the second day of her stay he had his first letter from her. It was strange to hear from her again, from Cornwall. It was the first letter he had had from Karen since their marriage and, with all its odd recalling of the girlish formality of tone, it was a sweet one. She had found Mrs. Talcott much better, but still quite weak and jaded, and very glad indeed to see her. And Mrs. Talcott really seemed to think that she would like to get away. Karen believed that Mrs. Talcott had actually been feeling lonely, uncharacteristic as that seemed. She would probably bring her back on Saturday. The letter ended: "My dear husband, your loving Karen."

Mrs. Talcott, therefore, was expected, and Mrs. Barker was told to make ready for her.

But on Saturday morning, when Karen was starting, he had a wire from her telling him that plans were altered and that she was coming back alone.

He went to meet her at Paddington, remembering the meeting when she had come up after their engagement. It was a different Karen, a Karen furred and finished and nearly elegant, who stepped from the train; but she had, as then, her little basket with the knitting and the book; and the girlish face was scarcely altered; there was even a preoccupation on it that recalled still more vividly the former meeting at Paddington. "Well, dearest, and why isn't Mrs. Talcott here, too?" were his first words.

Karen took his arm as he steered her towards the luggage. "It is only put off, I hope, that visit," she said, "because I heard this morning, Gregory, and wired to you then, that Tante asks if she may come to us next week." Her voice was not artificial; it expressed determination as well as gentleness and seemed to warn him that he must not show her if he were not pleased. Yet duplicity, in his unpleasant surprise, was difficult to assume.

"Really. At last. How nice," he said; and his voice rang oddly. "But poor old Mrs. Talcott. Madame von Marwitz didn't know, I suppose," he went on, "that we'd just been planning to have her?"

Karen, her arm still in his, stood looking over the heaped up luggage and now pointed out her box to the porter. Then, as they turned away and went towards their cab, she said, more gently and more determinedly: "Yes; she did know we had planned it. I wrote and told her so, and that is why she wrote back so quickly to ask if we could not put off Mrs. Talcott for her; because she will be leaving London very soon and it will be, this next week, her only chance of being with us. Mrs. Talcott did not mind at all. I don't think she really wanted to come so much, Gregory. It is as Tante says, you know," Karen settled herself in a corner of the hansom, "she really does not like leaving Les Solitudes."

Gregory had the feeling of being enmeshed. Why had Madame von Marwitz thrown this web? Had she really divined in a flash his hope and his intention? Was there any truth in her sudden statement that this was the only week she could give them? "Oh! Really," was all that he found to say to Karen's explanations, and then, "Where is Madame von Marwitz going when she leaves us then?"

"To the Riviera, with the Duchess of Bannister, I think it is arranged. I may wire to her, then, Gregory, at once, and say that she is to come?"

"Of course. How long are we to have the pleasure of entertaining her?"

"She did not say; for a week at least, I hope. Perhaps, even, for a fortnight if that will be convenient for you. It will be a great joy to me," Karen went on, "if only"—she was speaking with that determined steadiness, looking before her as they drove; now, suddenly, she turned her eyes on him "if only you will try to enjoy it, too, Gregory."

It was, in a sense, a challenge, yet it was, too, almost an appeal, and it brought them nearer than they had been for weeks.

Gregory's hand caught hers and, holding it tightly, smiling at her rather tremulously, he said: "I enjoy anything, darling, that makes you happy."

"Ah, but," said Karen, her voice keeping its earnest control, "I cannot be happy with you and Tante unless you can enjoy her for yourself. Try to know Tante, Gregory," she went on, now with a little breathlessness; "she wants that so much. One of the first things she asked me when she came back was that I should try to make you care for her. She felt at once—and oh! so did I, Gregory—that something was not happy between you."

Her hand holding his tightly, her earnest eyes on his, Gregory felt his blood turn a little cold as he recognized once more the soft, unremitting pressure. It had begun, then, so early. She had asked Karen that when she first came back. "But you see, dearest," he said, trying to keep his head between realizations of Madame von Marwitz's craft and Karen's candour, "I've never been able to feel that Madame von Marwitz wanted me to care for her or to come in at all, as it were. I don't mean anything unkind; only that I imagined that what she did ask of me was to keep outside and leave your relation and hers alone. And that's what I've tried to do."

"Oh, you mistake Tante, Gregory, you mistake her." Karen's hand grasped his more tightly in the urgency of her opportunity. "She cared for me too much—yes, it is there that you do not understand—to feel what you think. For she knows that I cannot be happy while you shut yourself away from her."

"Then it's not she who shuts me out?" he tried to smile.

"No; no; oh, no, Gregory."

"I must push in, even when I seem to feel I'm not wanted?"

She would not yield to his attempted lightness. "You mustn't push in; you must be in; with us, with Tante and me."

"Do you mean literally? I'm to be a third at your tête-à-têtes?"

"No, Gregory, I do not mean that; but in thought, in sympathy. You will try to know Tante. You will make her feel that you and I are not parted when she is there."

She saw it all, all Tante's side, with a dreadful clearness. And it was impossible that she should see what he did. He must submit to seeming blurred and dull, to pretending not to see anything. At all events her hand was in his. He felt able to face the duel at close quarters with Madame von Marwitz as long as Karen let him keep her hand.