For a strange moment sheer fury struggled with subtler emotions in Madame von Marwitz's face, and then self-pity, overpowering, engulfing all else. "And is this the return you make me for my love?" she cried. Her voice broke in desperate sobs and long-pent misery found relief. She sank into her chair.
"I asked for no reconciliation," said Karen. "I left him and we knew that we were parting forever. There is no love between us. Have you no understanding at all, and no thought of my pride?"
It was woman addressing woman. The child Karen was gone.
"Your pride?" Madame von Marwitz repeated in her sobs. "And what of mine? Was it not for you, stony-hearted girl? Is it not your happiness I seek? If I have been mistaken in my hopes for you, is that a reason for turning upon me like a serpent!"
Karen had walked to the long window that opened to the verandah and looked out, pressing her forehead to the pane. "You must forgive me if I was unkind. What you said burned me."
"Ah, it is well for you to speak of burnings!" Madame von Marwitz sobbed, aware that Karen's wrath was quelled. "I am scorched by all of you! by all of you!" she repeated incoherently. "All the burdens fall upon me and, in reward, I am spurned and spat upon by those I seek to serve!"
"I am sorry, Tante. It was what you said. That you should think it possible."
"Sorry! Sorry! It is easy to say that you are sorry when you have rolled me in the dust of your insults and your ingratitude!" Yet the sobs were quieter.
"Let us say, then, that it has been misunderstanding," said Karen. She still stood in the window, but as she spoke the words she drew back suddenly. She had found herself looking into Mr. Drew's eyes. His face, gazing in oddly upon her, was at the other side of the pane, and, in the apparition, its suddenness, its pallor, rising from the dusk, there was something almost horrible.
"Who is that?" came Tante's voice, as Karen drew away. She had turned in her chair.