now--as I saw her standing there in the forest with her foolish face. I
felt in my inmost soul that she was to bring me sorrow. She takes him
from me! She puts me to shame before the world! And I am to implore her
to take pity on me!"

She had extended her clenched hand in speaking and now struck it
violently on the desk. The silver blotter, the candlesticks, the
pen-tray and ink-stand leaped in their places and the ink, splashing up,
spattered her white silk robe.

"There now," said Mrs. Talcott, eyeing her impassively, "you've gone and
spoiled your nice dress."

"Damn the dress!" said Madame von Marwitz. Leaning her elbows on the
desk and her face on her hands, she wept; the tears trickled between her
fingers.

But in a very little while the storm passed. She straightened herself,
found her lace-edged handkerchief and dried her eyes and cheeks; then,
taking a long breath, she drew forward a pad of paper.

"I am a fool, am I not, Tallie," she remarked. "And you are wise; a
traitor, yet wise. I will do as you say. Wait there and you shall see."

Mrs. Talcott now subsided heavily into a chair and for some fifteen
minutes there was no sound but the scratching of Madame von Marwitz's
pen and the deep sighs that from time to time she heaved.

Then: "So: will that do?" she asked, leaning back with the deepest of
the sighs and handing the pages to Mrs. Talcott.

Her dark, cold eyes, all clouded with weeping, had a singularly
child-like expression as she thus passed on her letter for inspection.
And--as when she had stretched out her legs for Mrs. Talcott to put on
her stockings--one saw beyond the instinctively confiding gesture a long
series of scenes reaching back to childhood, scenes where, in crises,
her own craft and violence and unscrupulous resource having undone her,
she had fallen back in fundamental dependence on the one stable and
inalienable figure in her life.

Mrs. Talcott read:

"My Friend--Dearest and best Beloved,--I am in the straits of a
terrible grief.--I am blind with weeping, dazed from a sleepless
night and a day of anguish.--My child, my Karen, is gone and, oh my
friend, I am in part to blame.--I am hot of blood, quick of tongue,
as you know, and you know that Karen is haughty, resentful,
unwilling to brook reproof even from me. But I do not attempt to
exonerate myself. I will open my heart to you and my friend will
read aright and interpret the brok