. Talcott. "I'm very glad to have had
the pleasure of making your acquaintance."

"And I of making yours."

Mrs. Talcott departed and Gregory turned to Karen. She was standing near
the window, looking at him.

"We must say good-bye, too, I suppose," said Gregory, mastering his
grief. "You will give me your guardian's address so that I can write to
her at once?"

Her face had worn the aspect of a grey, passive sheet of water; a
radiant pallor now seemed struck from its dulled surface.

"You are going to write to Tante?" she said.

"Isn't that the next step?" Gregory asked. "You will write, too, won't
you? Or is it part of my ordeal that I'm to plead my cause alone?"

Karen had clasped her hands together on her breast and, in the eyes
fixed on his, tears gathered. "Do not speak harshly," she said. "I am so
sorry there must be the ordeal. But so happy, too--so suddenly. Because
I believed that you were going to leave me since you thought me so wrong
and so unloving."

"Going to leave you, Karen?" Gregory repeated in amazement. Desperate
amusement struggled in his face with self-reproach. "My darling child,
what must you think of me? And, actually, you'd have let me go?" He had
come to her and taken her hands in his.

"What else could I do?"

"Such an idiot would have deserved it? Could you believe me such an
idiot? Darling, you so astonish me. What a strange, indomitable creature
you are."

"What else could I do, Gregory?" she repeated, looking into his face and
not smiling in answer to his smiling, frowning gaze.

"Love me more; that's what you could have done--a great deal more," said
Gregory. "That's what you must do, Karen. I can't bear to think that you
wouldn't marry me without her consent. I can't bear to think that you
don't love me enough. But leave you because you don't love me as much as
I want you to love me! My darling, how little you understand."

"You seemed very angry," said Karen. "I was so unhappy. I don't know how
I should have borne it if you had gone away and left me like this. But
love should not make one weak, Gregory. There you are wrong, to think it
is because I do not love you."

"Ah, you'll find out if I'm wrong!" Gregory exclaimed with tender
conviction. "You'll find out how much more you are to love me. Oh, yes,
I will kiss you good-bye, Karen. I don't care if all the Tantes in the
world forbid it!"

In thinking afterwards of these last moments that they had had together,
th