l chair that she sinks back into and forgets about. Besides, some
people have a right not to see things. One doesn't ask from giants the
same sort of perception that one does from pygmies."

This was indeed hard on the Lavingtons; but Gregory was not thinking of
the Lavingtons, who could take care of themselves. He was wondering, as
he more and more wondered, about Madame von Marwitz, and what she saw
and what she permitted herself not to see.

"You aren't invisible to her sometimes?" he inquired.

Her innocence before his ironies made him ashamed always of having
spoken them. "It is just that that makes me feel sometimes so badly
about Mrs. Talcott," she answered now; "just because she is, in a sense,
sometimes invisible, and I'm not. Mrs. Talcott, of course, counts for a
great deal more in the way of comfort and confidence than I do; I don't
believe that Tante really is as intimate with anybody in the world as
with Mrs. Talcott; but she doesn't count as much as I do, I am nearly
sure, in the way of tenderness. I really think that in the way of
tenderness I am nearer than anybody."

They left the flagged garden now, and came down to a lower terrace. Here
the sun shone fully; they walked to and fro in the radiance. "Of
course," Karen continued to define and confide, "as far as interest goes
any one of her real friends counts for more than I do, and you mustn't
think that I mean to say that I believe myself the most loved; not at
all. But I am the tender, home thing in her life; the thing to pet and
care for and find waiting. It is that that is so beautiful for me and so
tragic for her."

"Why tragic?"

"Oh, but you do not feel it? A woman like that, such a heart, and such a
spirit--and no one nearer than I am? That she should have no husband and
no child? I am a makeshift for all that she has lost, or never had."

"And Mrs. Talcott?" said Gregory after a moment. "Is it Mrs. Talcott's
tragedy to have missed even a makeshift?"

Karen now turned her eyes on him, and her face, as she scrutinized him,
showed a slight severity. "Hardly that. She has Tante."

"Has her as the chair has her, you mean?" He couldn't for the life of
him control the question. It seemed indeed due to their friendship that
he should not conceal from her the fact that he found disproportionate
elements in her devotion. Yet it was not the right way in which to be
frank, and Karen showed him so in her reply. "I mean that Tante is
everything to