Karen had kept her troubled eyes on his downcast face. "There might be things she did not like; things she would not believe for my happiness in married life," she replied.
"And you would take her word against mine?"
"You forget, I think," he had lifted his eyes to hers and she looked back at him, steadily, with no entreaty, but with all the perplexity of her deep pain. "She has known me for eleven years. I have only known you for three months."
He could not now control the bitterness or the dismay; for, coldly, cuttingly he knew it, it was quite possible that Madame von Marwitz would not "like things" in him. Their one encounter had not been of a nature to endear him to her. "It simply means," he said, looking into her eyes, "that you haven't any conception of what love is. It means that you don't love me."
They looked at each other for a moment and then Karen said, "That is hard." And after another moment she rose to her feet. Gregory got up and they went down the cliff-path towards Les Solitudes.
He had not spoken recklessly. His words expressed his sense of her remoteness. He could not imagine what sort of love it was that could so composedly be put aside. And making no feminine appeal or protest, she walked steadily, in silence, before him. Only at a turning of the way did he see that her lips were compressed and tears upon her cheeks.
"Karen," he said, looking into her face as he now walked beside her; "won't you talk it over? You astonish me so unspeakably. Can she destroy our friendship, too? Would you give me up as a friend if she didn't like things in me?"
The tears expressed no yielding, for she answered "Yes."
"And how far do you push submission? If she told you to marry someone she chose for you, would you consent, whether you loved him or not?"
"It is not submission," said Karen. "It is our love, hers and mine. She would not wish me to marry a man I did not love. The contrary is true. My guardian before she went away spoke to me of a young man she had chosen for me, someone for whom she had the highest regard and affection; and I, too, am very fond of him. She felt that it would be for my happiness to marry him, and she hoped that I would consent. But I did not love him. I told her that I could never love him; and so it ended immediately. You do her injustice in your thoughts of her; and you do me injustice, too, if you think of me as a person who would marry where I did not love."