ion, I know."

She lowered her eyes and sat for so long in silence that presently,
rather ashamed of the bitterness of his last words, he went on in a
kinder tone: "I know that I can never make you understand. You have your
infatuation and it blinds you. You've been blind to the way in which,
from the very beginning, she has tracked me down. You've been blind to
the fact that the thing that has moved her hasn't been love for you but
spite, malicious spite, against me for not giving her the sort of
admiration she's accustomed to. If I've come to hate her--I didn't in
the least at first, of course--it's only fair to say that she hates me
ten times worse. I only asked that she should let me alone."

"And let me alone," said Karen, who had listened without a movement.

"Oh no," Gregory said, "that's not at all true. You surely will be fair
enough to own that it's not; that I did everything I could to give you
both complete liberty."

"As when you applauded and upheld Betty for her insolent interference;
as when you complained to me of my guardian because she asked that I
should have a wider life; as when you hoped to have Mrs. Talcott here so
that my guardian might be kept out."

"Did she suggest that?"

"She showed it to me. I had not seen it even then. Do you deny it?"

"No; I don't suppose I can, though it was nothing so definite. But I
certainly hoped that Madame von Marwitz would not come here."

"And yet you can tell me that you have not tried to come between us."

"Yes; I can. I never tried to come between you. I tried to keep away.
It's been she, as I say, who has tracked me down. That was what I was
afraid of if she came here; that she'd force me to show my dislike. Can
you deny, Karen, I ask you this, that from the beginning she has made
capital to you out of my dislike, and pointed it out to you?"

"I will not discuss that with you," said Karen; "I know that you can
twist all her words and actions."

"I don't want to do that. I can see a certain justice in her malice. It
was hard for her, of course, to find that you'd married a man she didn't
take to and who didn't take to her; but why couldn't she have left it at
that?"

"It couldn't be left at that. It wasn't only that," said Karen. "If she
had liked you, you would never have liked her; and if you had liked her
she would have liked you."

The steadiness of her voice as she thus placed the heart of the matter
before him brought him a certain relie