stood for a long time in silence, Gregory leaning beside her and
looking down at the sea. His thought was not with the stricken figure
she put before him; it dwelt on the girl facing horror, on the child
bearing more than a child should bear. Yet he was glad to feel, as a
background to his thoughts, that Madame von Marwitz was indeed very
pitiful.

"You understand," said Karen, straightening herself at last and laying
her hands on the wall. "You see how it is."

"Yes," said Gregory.

"It is kind of you, and beautiful, to feel me, as your friend, a person
of value," said Karen. "But it does not please me to have the great fact
of my life belittled."

"I haven't meant to do that, really. I see why it means so much, to you.
But I see you before I see the facts of your life; they interest me
because of you," said Gregory. "You come first to me. It's that I want
you to understand."

Karen had at last turned her eyes upon his and they met them in a long
encounter that recalled to Gregory their first. It was not the moment
for explicit recognitions or avowals; the shadow of the past lay too
darkly upon her. But that their relation had changed her deepened gaze
accepted. She took his hand, she had a fashion almost boyish of taking
his rather than giving her hand, and said: "We shall both understand
more and more; that is so, is it not? And some day you will know her.
Until you know her you cannot really understand."

CHAPTER XI

Karen and he had walked back to the house in silence, and at the door,
where she stood to see him off, it had been arranged that he was to
lunch at Les Solitudes next day and that she was to show him a favourite
headland, one not far away, but that he had never yet been shown. From
the sweetness, yet gravity, of her look and voice he could infer nothing
but that she recognized change and a new significance. Her manner had
neither the confusion nor the pretended unconsciousness of ordinary
girlhood. She was calm, but with a new thoughtfulness. He arrived a
little early next day and found Mrs. Talcott alone in the morning-room
writing letters. He noticed, as she rose from the bureau, her large,
immature, considered writing. "Karen'll be down in a minute or two, I
guess," she said. "Take a chair."

"Don't let me interrupt you," said Gregory, as Mrs. Talcott seated
herself before him, her hands folded at her waist. But Mrs. Talcott,
remarking briefly, "Don't mention it," did not move back