the door
handle gently turned and Tante stood within the room.

Karen looked at her and Madame von Marwitz looked back, and Madame von
Marwitz's face was almost as white as the death-like face on the pillow.
She said no word, nor did Karen, and in the long stillness delirium
again flickered through Karen's brain, and Tante, standing there, became
a nightmare presence, dead, gazing, immutable. Then she moved again, and
the slow, soft moving was more dreadful than the stillness, and coming
forward Tante fell on her knees beside the bed and hid her face in the
bed-clothes.

Karen gave a strange hoarse cry. She heard herself crying, and the sound
of her own voice seemed to waken her again to reality: "Franz! Franz!
Franz!"

Madame von Marwitz was weeping; her large white shoulders shook with
sobs. "Karen," she said, "forgive me! Karen, it is I. Forgive me!"

"Franz!" Karen repeated, turning her head away on the pillow.

"Karen, you know me?" said Madame von Marwitz. She had lifted her head
and she gazed through her tears at the strange, changed, yet so
intimately known, profile. It was as if Karen were the more herself,
reduced to the bare elements of personality; rocky, wasted, alienated.
"Do not kill me, my child," she sobbed, "Listen to me, Karen! I have
come to explain all, and to implore for your forgiveness." She possessed
herself of one of the hot, emaciated hands. Karen drew it away, but she
turned her head towards her.

Tante's tears, her words and attitude of abjection, dispersed the
nightmare horror. She understood that Tante had come not as a ghastly
wraith; not as a pursuing fury; but as a suppliant. Her eyes rested on
her guardian and their gaze, now, was like cold, calm daylight. "Why are
you here?" she asked.

Madame von Marwitz's sobs, at this, broke forth more violently. "You
remember our parting, my child! You remember my mad and shameful words!
How could I not come!" she articulated brokenly. "Oh, I have sought you
in terror, in unspeakable longing! My child--it was a madness. Did you
not see it? I went to you at dawn that day to kneel before you, as I
kneel now, and to implore your pardon. And you were gone! Oh, Karen--you
will listen to me now!"

"You need not tell me," said Karen. "I understand."

"Ah, no: ah, no:" said Madame von Marwitz, laying her supplicating hand
on the sleeve of Karen's nightdress. "You do not understand. How could
you--young and cold and flawless--understand my heart