her final realization, the realization that had divided her and Gregory.
"It isn't so with us, Mrs. Talcott," she said. "He has shown himself a
man I cannot live with. None of our feelings are the same. All my sacred
things he despises."

"Mercedes, you mean?" Mrs. Talcott suggested after a moment's silence.

"Yes. And more." Karen could not name her mother.

Mrs. Talcott sat silent.

"Has Tante not told you why I was here?" Karen presently asked.

"No," said Mrs. Talcott. "I haven't had a real talk with Mercedes since
she got back. Her mind is pretty well taken up with this young man."

To this Karen, glancing at Mrs. Talcott in a slight bewilderment, was
able to say nothing, and Mrs. Talcott pursued, resuming her former tone:
"There's another upsetting thing about marriage, Karen, and that is that
you can't expect your families to feel about each other like you feel.
It isn't in nature that they should, and that's one of the things that
young married people can't make up their minds to. Now Mr. Jardine isn't
the sort of young man to care about many people; few and far between
they are, I should infer, and Mercedes ain't one of them. Mercedes
wouldn't appeal to him one mite. I saw that as plain as could be from
the first."

"He should have told me so," said Karen, with her rocky face and voice.

"Well, he didn't tell you he found her attractive, did he?"

"No. But though I saw that there was blindness, I thought it was because
he did not know her. I thought that when he knew her he would care for
her. And I could forgive his not caring. I could forgive so much. But it
is worse, far worse than that. He accuses Tante of dreadful things. It
is hatred that he feels for her. He has confessed it." The colour had
risen to Karen's cheeks and burned there as she spoke.

"Well now!" Mrs. Talcott imperturbably ejaculated.

"You can see that I could not live with a man who hated Tante," said
Karen.

"What sort of things for instance?" Mrs. Talcott took up her former
statement.

"How can I tell you, Mrs. Talcott. It burns me to think of them.
Hypocrisy in her feeling for me; selfishness and tyranny and deceit. It
is terrible. In his eyes she is a malignant woman."

"Tch! Tch!" Mrs. Talcott made an indeterminate cluck with her tongue.

"I struggled not to see," said Karen, and her voice took on a sombre
energy, "and Tante struggled, too, for me. She, too, saw from the very
first what it might mean. She asked me, on