Gregory now had taken a chair before her and his eyes, with a new look, gazed deeply into hers as she went on: "I wouldn't have accepted what your letter said, not for a minute, if I hadn't got Mercedes's next thing and if I hadn't seen that Mercedes, for a wonder, wasn't telling lies. I was a mighty sick woman, Mr. Jardine, for a few days; I just seemed to give up. But then I got to thinking. I got to thinking, and the more I thought the more I couldn't lie there and take it. I thought about Mercedes, and what she's capable of; and I thought about you and how I felt dead sure you loved Karen; and I thought about that poor child and all she'd gone through; and the long and short of it was that I felt it in my bones that Mercedes was up to mischief. Karen sent for her, she said; but I don't believe Karen sent for her;—I believe she got wind somehow of where Karen was and lit out before I could stop her; yes, I was away that day, Mr. Jardine, and when I came back I found that three ladies had come for Mercedes and she'd made off with them. It may be true about Karen; she may have done this wicked thing; but if she's done it I don't believe it's the way Mercedes says she has. And I've worked it out to this: you must see Karen, Mr. Jardine; you must have it from her own mouth that she loves Franz and wants to go off with him and marry him before you give her up."
Gregory's face, as these last words were spoken, showed a delicate stiffening. "She won't see me," he said.
"Who says so?" asked Mrs. Talcott.
"Don't imagine that I'd have accepted her guardian's word for it," said Gregory, "but everything Madame von Marwitz has written has been merely corroborative. She told us that Karen was there with this man and I knew it already. She said that Karen had begun to look to him as a rescuer from me on the day she saw him here in London, and what I remembered of that day bore it out. She said that I should remember that on the night we parted Karen told me that she would try to set herself free. Karen has confided in her; it was true. And it's true, isn't it, that Karen was in terror of falling into my hands. You can't deny this, can you? Why should I torture Karen and myself by seeing her?" said Gregory. He had averted his eyes as he spoke.
"But do you want her back, Mr. Jardine?" Mrs. Talcott had faced his catalogue of evidence immovably.
"Not if she loves this man," said Gregory. "And that's the final fact. I know Karen; she couldn't have done this unless she loved him. The provocation wasn't extreme enough otherwise. She wouldn't, from sheer generosity, disgrace herself to free me, especially since she knew that I considered that that would be to disgrace me, too. No; her guardian's story has all the marks of truth on it. She loves the man and she had planned to meet him. And all I've got to do now is to see that she is free to marry him as soon as possible." He got up as he spoke and walked up and down the room.
Mrs. Talcott's eye followed him and his despair seemed a fuel to her faith. "Mr. Jardine," she said, after a moment of silence, "I'll stake my life on it you're wrong. I know Karen better than you do; I guess women understand each other better than a man ever understands them. The bed-rock fact about a woman is that she'll hide the thing she feels most and she'll say what she hopes ain't true so as to give the man a chance for convincing her it ain't true. And the blamed foolishness of the man is that he never does. He just goes off, sick and mournful, and leaves her to fight it out the best she can. Karen don't love Franz Lippheim, Mr. Jardine; nothing'll make me believe she loves him. And nothing'll make me believe but what you could have got her to stay that time she left you if you'd understood women better. She loves you, Mr. Jardine, though she mayn't know it, and it's on the cards she knows it so well that she's dead scared of showing it. Because Karen's a wife through and through; can't you see it in her face? You're youngish yet, and a man, so I don't feel as angry with you as you deserve, perhaps, for not understanding better and for letting Karen get it into her head you didn't love her any more; for that's what she believes, Mr. Jardine. And what I'm as sure of as that my name's Hannah Talcott is that she'll never get over you. She's that kind of woman; a rare kind; rocky; she don't change. And if she's gone and done this thing, like it appears she has, it isn't in the way Mercedes says; it's only to set you free and to get away from the fear of being handed over to a man who don't love her. For she didn't understand, either, Mr. Jardine. Women are blamed foolish in their way, too."
Gregory had stopped in his walk and was standing before Mrs. Talcott looking down at her; and while Mrs. Talcott fixed the intense blue of her eyes upon him he became aware of an impression almost physical in its vividness. It was as if Mrs. Talcott were the most wise, most skilful, most benevolent of doctors who, by some miraculous modern invention, were pumping blood into his veins from her own superabundance. It seemed to find its way along hardened arteries, to creep, to run, to tingle; to spread with a radiant glow through all his chilled and weary body. Hope and fear mounted in him suddenly.
He could not have said, after that, exactly what happened, but he could afterwards recall, brokenly, that he must have shed tears; for his first distinct recollection was that he was leaning against the end of the piano and that Mrs. Talcott, who had risen, was holding him by the hand and saying: "There now, yes, I guess you've had a pretty bad time. You hang on, Mr. Jardine, and we'll get her back yet."
He wanted to put his head on Mrs. Talcott's shoulder and be held by her to her broad breast for a long time; but, since such action would have been startlingly uncharacteristic of them both, he only, when he could speak, thanked her.