"And Mrs. Talcott?" said Gregory after a moment. "Is it Mrs. Talcott's tragedy to have missed even a makeshift?"
Karen now turned her eyes on him, and her face, as she scrutinized him, showed a slight severity. "Hardly that. She has Tante."
"Has her as the chair has her, you mean?" He couldn't for the life of him control the question. It seemed indeed due to their friendship that he should not conceal from her the fact that he found disproportionate elements in her devotion. Yet it was not the right way in which to be frank, and Karen showed him so in her reply. "I mean that Tante is everything to her and that, in the nature of things, she cannot be so much to Tante. You mustn't take quite literally what I said of the chair, you know. It can hardly be a makeshift to have somebody like Tante to love and care for. I don't quite know what you mean by speaking like that," Karen said. Her gaze, in meeting his, had become almost stern. She seemed to scan him from a distance.
Gregory, though he felt a pang of disquietude, felt no disposition to retreat. He intended that she should be made to understand what he meant. "I think that what it comes to is that it is you I am thinking of, rather than of Mrs. Talcott," he said. "I don't know your guardian, and I do know you, and it is what she gets rather than what she gives that is most apparent to me."
"Gets? From me? What may that be?" Karen continued to return his gaze almost with haughtiness.
"The most precious thing I can imagine," said Gregory. "Your love. I hope that she is properly grateful for it."
She looked at him and the slow colour mounted to her cheeks; but it was as if in unconscious response to his feeling; it hardly, even yet, signified self-consciousness. She had stood still in asking her last question and she still did not move as she said: "I do not like to hear you speak so. It shows me that you understand nothing."
"Does it? I want to understand everything."
"You care for me," said Karen, standing still, her eyes on his, "and I care for you; but what I most wish in such a friend is that he should see and understand. May I tell you something? Will you wait while I tell you about my life?"
"Please tell me."