nly for her. Her face was like heaven opening. When the
carriage stopped and she leaned to me, I sprang to her and she put her
arms around me. They have been round me ever since," said Karen, joining
her fingers over her eyes and leaning her forehead upon them so that her
face was hidden; and for a moment she did not speak. "Ever since," she
went on presently, "she has been joy and splendour and beauty. What she
has given me is nothing. It is what she is herself that lifts the lives
of other people. Those who do not know her seem to me to have lives so
sad and colourless compared to mine. You cannot imagine it, anyone so
great, yet at the same time so little and so sweet. She is merry like no
one else, and witty, and full of cajoleries, like a child. One cannot be
dull with her, not for one moment. And there is through it all her
genius, the great flood of wonderful music; can you think what it is
like to live with that? And under-lying everything is the great
irremediable sorrow. I was with her when it came; the terrible thing. I
did not live with them while he was alive, you know, my Onkel Ernst; he
was so good and kind--always the kindest of friends to me; but he loved
her too deeply to be able to share their life, and how well one
understands that in her husband. He had me put at a school in Dresden. I
did not like that much, either. But, even if I were lonely, I knew that
my wonderful friends--my Tante and my Onkel--were there, like the sun
behind the grey day, and I tried to study and be dutiful to please them.
And in my holidays I was always with them, twice it was, at their
beautiful estate in Germany. And it was there that the horror came that
wrecked her life; her husband's death, his death that cannot be
explained or understood. He drowned himself. We never say it, but we
know it. That is the fear, the mystery. All his joy with her, his love
and happiness--to leave them;--it was madness; he had always been a sad
man; one saw that in his face; the doctors said it was madness. He
disappeared without a word one day. For three weeks--nothing. Tante was
like a creature crying out on the rack. And it was I who found him by
the lake-edge one morning. She was walking in the park, I knew; she used
to walk and walk fast, fast, quite silent; and with horrible fear I
thought: If I can keep her from seeing. I turned--and she was beside me.
I could not save her. Ah--poor woman!" Karen closed her hands over her
face.

They