aren's sleeve. She lifted her face and the tears streamed from under
her closed lids. "Let me not think of it or I shall go mad. How could I,
having known that devotion, sink to the place where you have seen me? Be
pitiful. He needed me so much--I believed. My youth was fading; I was
growing old. Soon the time was to come when no man's heart would turn to
me. Be pitiful. You do not know what it is to look without and see life
slowly growing dark and look within and see only sinister memories. It
came to me like late sunlight--like cool, sweet water--his love. I
believed in it. I loved him. Oh--" she sobbed, "how I loved him, Karen!
How my heart was torn with sick jealousy when I saw that his had turned
from me to you. I loved you, Karen, yet I hated you. Open your generous
heart to me, my child; do not spurn me from you. Understand how it may
be that one can strike at the thing one loves. I knew myself in the
grasp of an evil passion, but I could not tear it from me. I even
feared, with a savage fear that seemed to eat into my brain, that you
responded to his love. Oh, Karen, it was not I who spoke those shameful
words, when I found you with him, but a creature maddened with pain and
jealousy, who for days had fought against her madness and knew when she
spoke that she was mad. When I had sent him from me, when he was gone
from my life, and I knew that all was over, the evil fury passed from my
brain like a mist. I knew myself again. I saw again the sweet and sacred
places of my life. I saw you, Karen. Oh, my child," again the pleading
hand trembled on Karen's sleeve, "it has not all been misplaced, your
love for me; not all illusion. I am still the woman who has loved you
through so many years. You will not let one hour of frenzy efface our
happy years together?"

The words, the sobbing questions that waited for no answer, the wailing
supplications, had been poured forth in one great upwelling. Through the
tears that streamed she had seen Karen's face in blurred glimpses, lying
in profile to her on its pillow. Now, when all had been said and her
mind was empty, waiting, she passed her hand over her eyes, clearing
them of tears, and fixed them on Karen.

And silence followed. So long a silence that wonder came. Had she
understood? Was she half unconscious? Had all the long appeal been
wasted?

But Karen at last spoke and the words, in their calm, seemed to the
listening woman to pass like a cold wind over buds and ten