he read his deep miscalculation in her aspect he felt that
the moment had been worth it. Not many men, not even many poets, could
say that they had held, in such a scene, on such a night, an unwilling
goddess to their breast.

She did not speak. Her eyes did not pause to wither. They passed over
him. He had an image of the goddess wheeling to mount some chariot of
the sky as, with no indignity of haste, she turned from him. She turned.
And in the path, in the entrance to the flagged garden, Tante stood
confronting them.

She stood before them in the moonlight with a majesty at once
magnificent and ludicrous. She had come swiftly, borne on the wings of a
devouring suspicion, and she maintained for a long moment her Medusa
stare of horror. Then, it was the ugliest thing that Karen had ever
seen, the mask broke. Hatred, fury, malice, blind, atavistic passions
distorted her face. It was to fall from one nightmare to another and a
worse; for Tante seized her by the shoulders and shook and shook and
shook her, till the blood sprang and rang in her ears and eyeballs, and
her teeth chattered together, and her hair, loosened by the great jerks,
fell down upon her shoulders and about her face. And while she shook
her, Tante snarled--seeming to crush the words between her grinding
teeth, "Ah! _perfide! perfide! perfide!_"

From behind, other hands grasped Karen's shoulders. Mr. Drew grappled
with Tante for possession of her.

"Leave me--with my guardian," she gathered her broken breath to say. She
repeated it and Mr. Drew, invisible to her, replied, "I can't. She'll
tear you to pieces."

"Ah! You have still to hear from me--vile seducer!" Madame von Marwitz
cried, addressing the young man over Karen's shoulder. "Do you dare
dispute my right to save her from you--foul serpent! Leave us! Does she
not tell you to leave us?"

"I'll see her safely out of your hands before I leave her," said Mr.
Drew. "How dare you speak of perfidy when you saw her repulse me? You'd
have found it easier to forgive, no doubt, if she hadn't."

These insolent words, hurled at it, convulsed the livid face that
fronted Karen. And suddenly, holding Karen's shoulders and leaning
forward, Madame von Marwitz broke into tears, horrible tears--in all her
life Karen had never pitied her as she pitied her then--sobbing with
raking breaths: "No, no; it is too much. Have I not loved him with a
saintly love, seeking to uplift what would draw me down? Has he no