back to your nice young husband."

Karen, who sat on as if crushed beyond the point where anything could
crush her further, shook her head. "Do not ask me that, Mrs. Talcott,"
she said. "I can never go back to him."

"But, Karen, I guess you've got to own now that he was right and you
were wrong in that quarrel of yours. I guess you'll have to own that it
must have made him pretty sick to see her putting him in the wrong with
you all the time and spoiling everything; and there's no one on earth
can do that better than Mercedes."

"I see it all," said Karen. "But that does not change what happened
between Gregory and me. He does not love me. I saw it plainly. If he had
me back it would only be because he cares for conventions. He said cruel
things to me."

"I guess you said cruel things to him, Karen."

Karen shook her head slightly, with weariness rather than impatience.

"No, for he saw that it was my loyalty to her--my love of her--that he
was wounding. And he never understood. He never helped me. I can never
go back to him, for he does not love me."

"Now, see here, Karen," said Mrs. Talcott, after a pause, "you just let
me work it out. You'll have a good sleep and to-morrow morning I'll see
you off, before Mercedes is up, to a nice little farm near here that I
know about--just a little way by train--and there you'll stay, nice and
quiet, and I'll not let Mercedes know where you are. And I'll write to
Mr. Jardine and tell him just what's happened and what you meant to do,
and that you want to go to Frau Lippheim; and you mark my words, Karen,
that nice young husband of yours'll be here quicker than you can say
Jack Robinson."

Karen had dropped her hands and was looking at her old friend intently.
"Mrs. Talcott, you do not understand," she said. "You cannot write to
him. Have I not told you that he does not love me?"

"Shucks!" said Mrs. Talcott. "He'll love you fast enough now that
Mercedes is out of the way."

"But, Mrs. Talcott," said Karen, rising and looking down at the old
woman, whose face, in the dim light, had assumed to her reeling mind an
aspect of dangerous infatuation--"I do not think you know what you are
saying. What do I want of a man who only loves me when I cease to love
my guardian?"

"Well, say you give up love, then," Mrs. Talcott persisted, and a panic
seized Karen as she heard the unmoved tones. "Say you don't love him and
he don't love you. You can have conventions, then--he want