m sure, wish to do that; is it not so? Allow me
therefore to exculpate myself. I am a woman who, since childhood,
has had to labour for my livelihood and for that of those I love.
You can know nothing of what that labour of the artist's life
entails,--interminable journeys, suffocating ennui, the unwholesome
monotony and publicity of a life passed in hotels and trains. It was not
fit that a young and growing girl should share that life. As much as has
been possible I have guarded Karen from its dust and weariness. I have
had, of necessity, to leave her much alone, and she has needed
protection, stability, peace. I could have placed her in no lovelier
spot than my Cornish home, nor in safer hands than those of the guardian
and companion of my own youth. Do you not feel it a little unworthy, Mr.
Jardine, when you have all the present and all the future, to grudge me
even my past with my child?"

She spoke slowly, with a noble dignity, all hint of sultry menace
passed; willing, for Karen's sake, to stoop to this self-justification
before Karen's husband. And, for Karen's sake, she had the air of
holding in steady hands their relation, hers and his, assailed so
gracelessly by his taunting words. Gregory, for the first time in his
knowledge of her, felt a little bewildered. It was she who had opened
hostilities, yet she almost made him forget it; she almost made him feel
that he alone had been graceless. "I do beg your pardon," he said. "Yes;
I had wondered a little about it; and I understand better now." But he
gathered his wits together sufficiently to add, on a fairer foothold: "I
am sure you gave Karen all you could. What I meant was, I think, that
you should be generous enough to believe that I am giving her all I
can."

Madame von Marwitz rose as he said this and he also got up. It was not
so much, Gregory was aware, that they had fought to a truce as that they
had openly crossed swords. Her eyes still dwelt on him, and now as if in
a sad wonder. "But you are young. You are a man. You have ambition. You
wish to give more to the loved woman."

"I don't really quite know what you mean by more, Madame von Marwitz,"
said Gregory. "If it applies to my world, I don't expect, or wish, to
give Karen a better one."

They stood and confronted each other for a moment of silence.

"_Bien_," Madame von Marwitz then said, unemphatically, mildly. "_Bien._
I must see what I can do." She turned her eyes on Karen, who,
immediately