ilence, and
that it was symptomatic in her of deep emotion. And, the contagion of
the suffering beside her gaining upon her, her own fictitious calm
wavered. She bent again to look into the girl's averted face. "Karen,
_cherie_," she said, and now with a quicker utterance; "it is not worse
than I yet realise? You do not hide something that I have not yet seen.
It is dislike; I accept it. It is aversion, even. But his love for you;
that is strong, sincere? He will not make it too difficult for me? I am
not wrong in coming here to be with my child?"

Karen at length turned her eyes on her guardian with a heavy look. "What
would you find too difficult?" she asked.

Madame von Marwitz hesitated slightly, taken aback. But she grasped in
an instant her advantage. "That by being here I should feel that I came
between you and your husband. That by being here I made it more
difficult for you."

"I should not be happier if you were away--if what you think is true,
should I?" said Karen.

"Yes, my child," Madame von Marwitz returned, and now almost with
severity. "You would. You would not so sharply feel your husband's
aversion for me if I were not here. You would not have it in your ears;
before your eyes."

"I thought that you talked together quite easily to-night," Karen
continued. "I saw, of course, that you did not understand each other;
but with time that might be. I thought that if you were here he would by
degrees come to know you, for he does not know you yet."

"We talked easily, did we not, my child, to shield you, and you were not
more deceived by the ease than he or I. He does not understand me? I
hope so indeed. But to say that I do not understand him shows already
your wish to shield him, and at my expense. I do understand him; too
well. And if there is this repugnance in him now, may it not grow with
the enforced intimacy? That is my fear, my dread."

"He has never said that he disliked you."

"Said it? To you? I should imagine not, _parbleu_!"

"He has only said," Karen pursued with a curious doggedness, "that he
did not feel that you cared for him to care."

"Ah! Is it so? You have talked of it, then? And he has said that? And
did you believe it? Of me?"

But the growing passion and urgency of her voice seemed to shut Karen
more closely in upon herself rather than sweep her into impulsive
confidence. There was a hot exasperation in Madame von Marwitz's eye as
it studied the averted, stubborn head. "