ation, 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 har