her and that, in the nature of things, she cannot be so
much to Tante. You mustn't take quite literally what I said of the
chair, you know. It can hardly be a makeshift to have somebody like
Tante to love and care for. I don't quite know what you mean by speaking
like that," Karen said. Her gaze, in meeting his, had become almost
stern. She seemed to scan him from a distance.

Gregory, though he felt a pang of disquietude, felt no disposition to
retreat. He intended that she should be made to understand what he
meant. "I think that what it comes to is that it is you I am thinking
of, rather than of Mrs. Talcott," he said. "I don't know your guardian,
and I do know you, and it is what she gets rather than what she gives
that is most apparent to me."

"Gets? From me? What may that be?" Karen continued to return his gaze
almost with haughtiness.

"The most precious thing I can imagine," said Gregory. "Your love. I
hope that she is properly grateful for it."

She looked at him and the slow colour mounted to her cheeks; but it was
as if in unconscious response to his feeling; it hardly, even yet,
signified self-consciousness. She had stood still in asking her last
question and she still did not move as she said: "I do not like to hear
you speak so. It shows me that you understand nothing."

"Does it? I want to understand everything."

"You care for me," said Karen, standing still, her eyes on his, "and I
care for you; but what I most wish in such a friend is that he should
see and understand. May I tell you something? Will you wait while I
tell you about my life?"

"Please tell me."

"I want you to see and understand Tante," said Karen. "And how much I
love her; and why."

They walked on, from the terrace to the cliff-path. Karen stopped when
they had gone a little way and leaned her elbows on the stone wall
looking out at the sea. "She has been everything to me," she said.
"Everything."

He was aware, as he leaned beside her in the mellow evening light, of a
great uneasiness mingling with the beautiful gravity of the moment. She
was near him as she had never yet been near. She had almost recognized
his love. It was there between them, and it was as if, not turning from
it, she yet pointed to something beyond and above it, something that it
was his deep instinct to evade and hers to show him. He must not take a
step towards her, she seemed to tell him, until he had proved to her
that he had seen what she did. An