am not myself. I cannot
sleep. It haunts me--you and your broken life. And what I have to
propose," Tante looked down at her tapping fingers while she spoke, "is
that I offer myself as intermediary. Your husband will not take the
first step forward. So be it. I will take it. I will write to Mrs.
Forrester. I will tell her that if your husband will but offer me the
formal word of apology I will myself induce you to return to him. What
do you say, my Karen? Oh, to me, as you know, the forms are indifferent;
it is of you and your dignity that I think. I know you; without that
apology from him to me you could not contemplate a reconciliation. But
he has now had his lesson, your young man, and when he knows that,
through me, you would hold out the olive-branch, he will, I predict,
spring to grasp it. After all, he is in love with you and has had time
to find it out; and even if he were not, his mere man's pride must
writhe to see himself abandoned. And you, too, have had your lesson, my
poor Karen, and have seen that romance is a treacherous sand to build
one's life upon. Dignity, fitness, one's rightful place in life have
their claims. You are one, as I told you, to work out your destiny in
the world, not in the wilderness. What do you say, Karen? I would not
write without consulting you. _Hein!_ What is it?"

Karen had risen, and Madame von Marwitz's eyelashes fluttered a little
in looking up at her.

"I will never forgive you, I will never forgive you," said Karen in a
harsh voice, "if you speak of this again."

"What is this that you say to me, Karen?" Madame von Marwitz, too, rose.

"Never speak to me of this again," said Karen.

In the darkening room they looked at each other as they had never in all
their lives looked before. They were equals in maturity of demand.

For a strange moment sheer fury struggled with subtler emotions in
Madame von Marwitz's face, and then self-pity, overpowering, engulfing
all else. "And is this the return you make me for my love?" she cried.
Her voice broke in desperate sobs and long-pent misery found relief. She
sank into her chair.

"I asked for no reconciliation," said Karen. "I left him and we knew
that we were parting forever. There is no love between us. Have you no
understanding at all, and no thought of my pride?"

It was woman addressing woman. The child Karen was gone.

"Your pride?" Madame von Marwitz repeated in her sobs. "And what of
mine? Was it not for you, stony-