He, too, had risen and was smiling at her with a little constraint.
Karen, arrested on her way to the photographs, looked at him in surprise. "Will you come again? You are to be in Cornwall so long?"
"I'm to be here about a fortnight and I should like to come often, if I may." She was unaware, disconcertingly unaware; yet her surprise showed the frankest pleasure.
"How very nice," she said. "I did not think that you could come all that way more than once."
While they spoke, Mrs. Talcott's ancient, turquoise eyes were upon them, and in her presence Gregory found it easier to say things than it would have been to say them to Karen alone. Already, he felt sure, Mrs. Talcott understood, and if it was easy to say things in her presence might that not be because he guessed that she sympathised? "But I came down to Cornwall to see you," he said, leaning on his chair back and tilting it a little while he smiled at Karen.
Her pleasure rose in a flush to her cheek. "To see me?"
"Yes; I felt from our letters that we ought to become great friends."
She looked at him, pondering the unlooked-for possibility he put before her. "Great friends?" she repeated. "I have never had a great friend of my own. Friends, of course; the Lippheims and the Belots; and Strepoff; and you, of course, Mrs. Talcott; but never, really, a great friend quite of my own, for they are Tante's friends first and come through Tante. Of course you have come through Tante, too," said Karen, with evident satisfaction; "only not quite in the same way."
"Not at all in the same way," said Gregory. "Don't forget. We met at the concert, and without any introduction! It has nothing to do with Madame von Marwitz this time. It's quite on our own."
"Oh, but I would so much rather have it come through her, if we are to be great friends," Karen returned, smiling, though reflectively. "I think we are to be, for I felt you to be my friend from that first moment. But it was at the concert that we met and it was Tante's concert. So that it was not quite on our own. I want it to be through Tante," she went on, "because it pleases me very much to think that we may be great friends, and my happy things have come to me through Tante, always."