Mr. Drew. "But I like to hear her play."

"She plays with right feeling," said Madame von Marwitz. "She is not a
child to express herself in speech. Her music reveals her more truly."

"_Nur wo du bist sei alles, immer kindlich_," Mr. Drew mused. "That is
what she makes me think of." With anybody of Madame von Marwitz's
intelligence, frankness was far more likely to allay suspicion than
guile. And for very pride now she was forced to seem reassured. "Yes.
That is so," she said. And she continued to play.

CHAPTER XXXII

Karen meanwhile made her way to the cliff-path and, seating herself on a
grassy slope, she clasped her knees with her hands and gazed out over
the sea. She was thinking hard of something, and trying to think only of
that. It was true, the permission had been that she was to play on the
grand-piano when it was left open. There had been no rule set; it had
not been said that she was not to play at other times and indeed, on
many occasions, she had played unrebuked, before Tante came down. But
the thing to remember now, with all her power, was that, technically,
Tante had been right. To hold fast to that thought was to beat away a
fear that hovered about her, like a horrible bird of prey. She sat there
for a long time, and she became aware at last that though she held so
tightly to her thought, it had, as it were, become something lifeless,
inefficacious, and that fear had invaded her. Tante had been unkind,
unjust, unloving.

It was as though, in taking refuge with Tante, she had leaped from a
great height, seeing security beneath, and as though, alighting, she
slipped and stumbled on a sloping surface with no foothold anywhere.
Since she came, there had been only this sliding, sliding, and now it
seemed to be down to unseen depths. For this was more and worse than the
first fear of her coming. Tante had been unkind, and she so loved Mr.
Drew that she forgot herself when he bestowed his least attention
elsewhere.

Karen rose to her feet suddenly, aware that she was trembling.

She looked over the sea and the bright day was dreadful to her. Where
was she and what was she, and what was Tante, if this fear were true?
Not even on that far day of childhood when she had lost herself in the
forest had such a horror of loneliness filled her. She was a lost, an
unwanted creature.

She turned from the unanswering immensities and ran down the cliff-path
towards Les Solitudes. She could not be alone.