"Used to it. Yes. Too used to it," said Madame von Marwitz, seating herself now near Karen, her eyes still moving about the room. "But it is not right, it is not fitting, that you should spend your youth here. That was not the destiny I had hoped for you. I came here to find you, Karen, so that I might talk to you." Her fingers slightly tapped her chair-arm. "We must talk. We must see what is to be done."
"Do you mean about me, Tante?" Karen asked after a moment. The look of the ghostly room and of the white, enfolded figure seated before her with its restless eyes seemed part of the chill that Tante's words brought.
"About you. Yes. About who else, parbleu!" said Madame von Marwitz with a slight laugh, her eyes shifting about the room; and with a change of tone she added: "I have it on my heart—your situation—day and night. Something must be done and I am prepared to do it."
"To do what?" asked Karen. Her voice, too, had changed, but not, as Madame von Marwitz's, to a greater sweetness.
"Well, to save it—the situation; to help you." Madame von Marwitz's ear was quick to catch the change. "And I have come, my Karen, to consult with you. It is a matter, many would say, for my pride to consider; but I will not count my pride. Your happiness, your dignity, your future are the things that weigh with me. I am prostrated, made ill, by the miserable affair; you see it, you see that I am not myself. I cannot sleep. It haunts me—you and your broken life. And what I have to propose," Tante looked down at her tapping fingers while she spoke, "is that I offer myself as intermediary. Your husband will not take the first step forward. So be it. I will take it. I will write to Mrs. Forrester. I will tell her that if your husband will but offer me the formal word of apology I will myself induce you to return to him. What do you say, my Karen? Oh, to me, as you know, the forms are indifferent; it is of you and your dignity that I think. I know you; without that apology from him to me you could not contemplate a reconciliation. But he has now had his lesson, your young man, and when he knows that, through me, you would hold out the olive-branch, he will, I predict, spring to grasp it. After all, he is in love with you and has had time to find it out; and even if he were not, his mere man's pride must writhe to see himself abandoned. And you, too, have had your lesson, my poor Karen, and have seen that romance is a treacherous sand to build one's life upon. Dignity, fitness, one's rightful place in life have their claims. You are one, as I told you, to work out your destiny in the world, not in the wilderness. What do you say, Karen? I would not write without consulting you. Hein! What is it?"
Karen had risen, and Madame von Marwitz's eyelashes fluttered a little in looking up at her.
"I will never forgive you, I will never forgive you," said Karen in a harsh voice, "if you speak of this again."
"What is this that you say to me, Karen?" Madame von Marwitz, too, rose.
"Never speak to me of this again," said Karen.
In the darkening room they looked at each other as they had never in all their lives looked before. They were equals in maturity of demand.