, for she was happy with my father.
It was a truer marriage than any I have known. She was more married than
you or I have ever been or could ever have been; for there was deep love
between them, and trust and understanding. Do not speak to me of her. I
forbid it."
She turned to the door. Gregory sprang to her side and seized her wrist.
"Karen! Where are you going? Wait till to-morrow!" he exclaimed, fear
for her actual safety surmounting every other feeling.
She stood still under his hand and looked at him with her still passion
of repudiation. "I will not wait. I shall go to-night to Frau Lippheim.
And to-morrow I shall go to Cornwall. I shall tell Mrs. Barker to pack
my clothes and send them to me there."
"You have no money."
"Frau Lippheim will lend me money. My guardian will take care of me. It
is not for you to have any thought for me."
He dropped her arm. "Very well. Go then," he said.
He turned from her. He heard that she paused, the knob of the door in
her hand. "Good-bye," she then said.
Again it was, inconceivably, the mingled childishness, callousness and
considerateness. That, at the moment, she could think of the formality,
suffocated him. "Good-bye," he replied, not looking round.
The door opened and closed. He heard her swift feet passing down the
passage to their room.
She was not reckless. She needed her hat and coat at least. Quiet,
rational determination was in all her actions.
Yet, as he waited to hear her come out again, a hope that he knew to be
chimerical rose in him. She would, perhaps, return, throw herself in his
arms and, weeping, say that she loved him and could not leave him.
Gregory's heart beat quickly.
But when he heard her footsteps again they were not returning. They
passed along to the kitchen; she was speaking to Mrs. Barker--Gregory
had a shoot of surface thought for Mrs. Barker's astonishment; they
entered the hall again, the hall door closed behind them.
Gregory stood looking at the Bouddha. The tears kept mounting to his
throat and eyes and, furiously, he choked them back. He did not see the
Bouddha.
But, suddenly becoming aware of the bland contemplative gaze of the
great bronze image, his eyes fixed themselves on it.
He had known it from the first to be an enemy. Its presage was
fulfilled. The tidal wave had broken over his life.
PART II
CHAPTER XXIX
Karen sat in her corner of the railway carriage looking out at familiar
sce
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