ght be thinking about her. It occurred to her no
more than in the past to imagine that anybody attached to Tante could
spare thought to her. And as in the past, despite all the inner
desolation, it was easy to assume to this guest of Tante's the attitude
so habitual to her of the attendant in the temple, the attendant who,
rising from his seat at the door, comes forward tranquilly to greet the
worshipper and entertain him with quiet comment until the goddess shall
descend.

"Did you have a nice drive?" she inquired. "The weather has been
beautiful."

Mr. Drew, coming up to her as she stood in the open window, looked at
her with his impenetrable, melancholy eyes, smiling at her a little.

There was no tastelessness in his gaze, nothing that suggested a
recollection of what he had heard or seen last night; yet Karen was made
vaguely aware from his look that she had acquired some sort of
significance for him.

"Yes, it's been nice," he said. "I'm very fond of motoring. I'd like to
spend my days in a motor--always going faster and faster; and then drop
down in a blissful torpor at night. Madame von Marwitz was so kind and
made the chauffeur go very fast."

Karen was somewhat disturbed by this suggestion. "I am sure that she,
too, would like going very fast. I hope you will not tempt her."

"Oh, but I'm afraid I do," Mr. Drew confessed. "What is the good of a
motor unless you go too fast in it? A motor has no meaning unless it's a
method of intoxication."

Karen received the remark with inattention. She looked out over the sea,
preoccupied with the thought of Tante's recklessness. "I do not think
that going so fast can be good for her music," she said.

"Oh, but yes," Mr. Drew assured her, "nothing is so good for art as
intoxication. Art is rooted in intoxication. It's all a question of how
to get it."

"But with motoring you only get torpor, you say," Karen remarked. And,
going on with her own train of thoughts, "So much shaking will be bad,
perhaps, for the muscles. And there is always the danger to consider. I
hope she will not go too fast. She is too important a person to take
risks." There was no suggestion that Mr. Drew should not take them.

"Don't you like going fast? Don't you like taking risks? Don't you like
intoxication?" Mr. Drew inquired, and his eyes travelled from the blue
bows on her breast to the blue bows on her elbow-sleeves.

"I have never been intoxicated," said Karen calmly--she was quite