y. I am glad you see that,"
said Mrs. Forrester, tapping her table.

"It would have been far kinder to have dropped Karen than deliberately
to set to work, as she has done, to ruin her happiness. She hasn't been
able to keep her hands off it. She couldn't stand it--a happiness she
hadn't given; a happiness for which gratitude wasn't due to her."

"Gregory, Gregory," Mrs. Forrester raised her eyes to him now; "you are
frank with me, very frank; and I must be frank with you. There is more
than dislike here, and distrust, and morbid prejudice. There is
jealousy. Hints of it have come to me; I've tried to put them aside;
I've tried to believe, as my poor Mercedes did, that, by degrees, you
would adjust yourself to the claims on Karen's life, and be generous and
understanding, even when you had no spontaneous sympathy to give. But it
is all quite clear to me now. You can't accept the fact of your wife's
relation to Mercedes. You can't accept the fact of a devotion not wholly
directed towards yourself. I've known you since boyhood, Gregory, and
I've always had regard and fondness for you; but this is a serious
breach between us. You seem to me more wrong and arrogant than I could
trust myself to say. And you have behaved cruelly to a woman for whom my
feeling is more than mere friendship. In many ways my feeling for
Mercedes Okraska is one of reverence. She is one of the great people of
the world. To know her has been a possession, a privilege. Anyone might
be proud to know such a woman. And when I think of what you have now
said of her to me--when I think of how I saw her--here--last
night,--broken--crushed,--after so many sorrows--"

Tears had risen to Mrs. Forrester's eyes. She turned her head aside.

"Do you mean," said Gregory after a moment, in which it seemed to him
that his grey world preceptibly, if slightly, darkened, "do you mean
that I've lost your friendship because of Madame von Marwitz?"

"I don't know, Gregory; I can't tell you," said Mrs. Forrester, not
looking at him. "I don't recognize you. As to Karen, I cannot imagine
what your position with her can be. How is she to bear it when she knows
that it is said that you insulted her guardian's friends and then turned
her out of your house?"

"I didn't turn her out," said Gregory; he walked to the window and
stared into the street. "She went because that was the most venomous
thing she could do. And I didn't insult her friends."

"You said to her that the