hen she and Karen were left alone, Madame von Marwitz's expression
changed. The veils of lightness fell away; her face became profoundly
melancholy; she gazed in silence at Karen and then held out her arms to
her; Karen came closer and was enfolded in their embrace.

"My child, my child," said Madame von Marwitz, leaning, as was her wont
at these moments, her forehead against Karen's cheek.

"Dear Tante," said Karen. "You are not sad?" she murmured.

"Sad?" her guardian repeated after a moment. "Am I ever anything but
sad? But it is not of my sadness that I wish to speak. It is of you. Are
you happy, my dear one?"

"Oh, Tante--so happy, so very happy; more than I can say."

"Is it so?" Madame von Marwitz lifted her head and stroked back the
girl's hair. "Is it so indeed? He loves you very much, Karen?"

"Oh, yes, Tante."

"It is a great love? selfless? passionate? It is a love worthy of my
child?"

"Yes, indeed." A slight austerity was now apparent in Karen's tone.
Silence fell between them for a moment, and then, stroking again the
golden head, Madame von Marwitz continued, with great tenderness; "It is
well. It is what I have prayed for--for my child. And let me not cast
one shadow, even of memory, upon your happiness. Yet ah--ah Karen--if
you could have let me share in the sunshine a little. If you could have
remembered how dark was my way, how lonely. That my child should have
married without me. It hurts. It hurts--"

She did not wish to cast a shadow, yet she was weeping, the silent,
undisfigured weeping that Karen knew so well, showing only in the slow
welling of tears from darkened eyes.

"Oh, Tante," Karen now leaned her head to her guardian's shoulder, "I
did not dream you would mind so much. It was so difficult to know what
to do."

"Have I shown myself so indifferent to you in the past, my Karen, that
you should have thought I would not mind?"

"I do not mean that, Tante. I thought that you would feel that it was
what it was best for me to do. I had given my word. All the plans were
made."

"You had given your word? Would he not have let you put me before your
word? For once? For that one time in all our lives?"

"It was not that, Tante. Gregory would have done what I wished. You must
not think that I was forced in any way." Karen now had raised her head.
"But we had waited for you. We thought that you were coming. It was only
at the last moment that you let us know, Tante, and you did not e