es, oh yes, indeed, I thought that you must be feeling a little ill,
perhaps," Gregory observed blandly, turning his eyes now on Madame von
Marwitz. "Well, you see, Karen, I will take your place here, and it will
give me a chance for a quiet talk with your guardian."

"People must not bother her," Karen rose, pleased, he could see, with
this arrangement, and hoping, he knew, that the opportunity was a
propitious one, and that in it her dear ones might draw together. "You
will see that they don't bother her, Gregory, and go on showing her
these."

"They won't bother a bit, I promise," said Gregory, taking her place as
she rose. "They are all very happily engaged, and Madame von Marwitz and
I will look at the photographs in perfect peace."

Something in these words and in the manner with which her guardian
received them, with a deepening of her long, steady glance, arrested
Karen's departure. She stood above them, half confident, yet half
hesitating.

"Go, _mon enfant_," said Madame von Marwitz, turning the steady glance
on her. "Go. Nobody here, as your husband truly says, is thinking of me.
I shall be quite untroubled."

Still with her look of preoccupation Karen moved away.

Cheerfully and deliberately Gregory now proceeded to turn the pages of
the kodak album, and to point out with painstaking geniality the charms
and associations of each view, "_Tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin_,"
expressed his thought, for he didn't believe that Madame von Marwitz,
more than any person not completely self-abnegating, could tolerate
looking at other people's kodaks. But since it was her chosen
occupation, the best she could find to do with their dinner-party, she
should be gratified; should be shown Karen standing on a peak in the
Tyrol; Karen feeding the pigeons before St. Mark's; Karen, again--wasn't
it rather nice of her?--in a gondola. Madame von Marwitz bent her head
with its swinging pearls above the pictures, proffering now and then a
low murmur of assent.

But in the midst of the Paris pictures she lifted her head and looked at
him. It was again the steady, penetrating look, and now it seemed, with
the smile that veiled it, to claim some common understanding rather than
seek it. "Enough," she said. She dismissed the kodaks with a tap of her
fan. "I wish to talk with you. I wish to talk with you of our Karen."

Gregory closed the volume. Madame von Marwitz's attitude as she leaned
back, her arms lightly folded, affected