hearted girl? Is it not your happiness I
seek? If I have been mistaken in my hopes for you, is that a reason for
turning upon me like a serpent!"

Karen had walked to the long window that opened to the verandah and
looked out, pressing her forehead to the pane. "You must forgive me if I
was unkind. What you said burned me."

"Ah, it is well for you to speak of burnings!" Madame von Marwitz
sobbed, aware that Karen's wrath was quelled. "I am scorched by all of
you! by all of you!" she repeated incoherently. "All the burdens fall
upon me and, in reward, I am spurned and spat upon by those I seek to
serve!"

"I am sorry, Tante. It was what you said. That you should think it
possible."

"Sorry! Sorry! It is easy to say that you are sorry when you have rolled
me in the dust of your insults and your ingratitude!" Yet the sobs were
quieter.

"Let us say, then, that it has been misunderstanding," said Karen. She
still stood in the window, but as she spoke the words she drew back
suddenly. She had found herself looking into Mr. Drew's eyes. His face,
gazing in oddly upon her, was at the other side of the pane, and, in the
apparition, its suddenness, its pallor, rising from the dusk, there was
something almost horrible.

"Who is that?" came Tante's voice, as Karen drew away. She had turned in
her chair.

It seemed to Karen, then, that the room was filled with the whirring
wings of wild emotions, caught and crushed together. Tante had sprung up
and came with long, swift strides to the window. She, too, pressed her
face against the pane. "Ah! It is Claude," she said, in a hushed strange
voice, "and he did not see that I was here. What does he mean by looking
in like that?" she spoke now angrily, drying her eyes as she spoke. She
threw open the window. "Claude. Come here."

Mr. Drew, whose face seemed to have sunk, like a drowned face, back into
dark water, returned to the threshold and paused, arrested by his
friend's wretched aspect. "Come in. Enter," said Madame von Marwitz,
with a withering stateliness of utterance. "You have the manner of a
spy. Did you think that Karen and I were quarrelling?"

"I couldn't think that," said Mr. Drew, stepping into the room, "for I
didn't see that you were here."

"We have had a misunderstanding," said Madame von Marwitz. "No more. And
now we understand again. Is it not so, my Karen? You are going?"

"I think I will go to my room," said Karen, who looked at neither Madame
von Mar