He found Mrs. Forrester in her morning-room among loudly singing canaries and pots of jonquils; and as he shook hands with her he saw that this old friend, so old and so accustomed that she was like a part of his life, was embarrassed. The wrinkles on her withered, but oddly juvenile, face seemed to have shifted to a pattern of perplexity and pained resolution. He was not embarrassed, though he was beaten and done in a way Mrs. Forrester could not guess at; yet he felt an awkwardness.
They had known each other for a life-time, he and Mrs. Forrester, but they were not intimate; and how intimate they would have to become if they were to discuss with anything like frankness the causes and consequences of Madame von Marwitz's conduct! A gloomy indifference settled on Gregory as he realized that her dear friend's conduct was the one factor in the causes and consequences that Mrs. Forrester would not be able to appraise at its true significance.
She shook his hand, and seating herself at a little table and slightly tapping it with her fingers, "Now, my dear Gregory," she said, "will you, please, tell me why you have acted like this?"
"Isn't my case prejudged?" Gregory asked, reconstructing the scene that must have taken place last night when Madame von Marwitz had appeared before her friend.
"No, Gregory; it is not," Mrs. Forrester returned with some terseness, for she felt his remark to be unbecoming. "I hope to have some sort of explanation from you."
"I'm quite ready to explain; but it's hardly possible that my explanation will satisfy you," said Gregory. "You spoke, just now, when you called me up, of a situation and said I'd made it. My explanation can only consist in saying that I didn't make it; that Madame von Marwitz made it; that she came to us in order to make it and then to fix the odium of it on me."
Already Mrs. Forrester had flushed. She looked hard at the pot of jonquils near her. "You really believe that?"
"I do. She can't forgive me for not liking her," said Gregory.
"And you don't like her. You own to it."
"I don't like her. I own to it," Gregory replied with a certain frosty relief. It was like taking off damp, threadbare garments that had chilled one for a long time and facing the winter wind, naked, but invigorated. "I dislike her very much."