Karen had been looking from him to the Bouddha. "But Gregory, of course he must stay here," she said, "in the room we live in. Tante, I am sure, meant that." Her voice had a tremor. "I am sure it would hurt her dreadfully if we put him out of the way."
Barker was now gone and Gregory put his arm around her. "But it makes all the room wrong, doesn't it? It will make us all wrong—that's what I rather feel. We aren't à la hauteur." He remembered, after speaking them, that these were the words he had used of his one colloquy with Madame von Marwitz.
"I don't think," said Karen after a moment, "that you are quite kind."
"Darling—I'm only teasing you," said Gregory. "I'll like the thing if you want me to, and make offerings to him every morning—he looks in need of sacrifices and offerings, doesn't he? And what a queer Oriental scent is in the air. Rather nice, that."
"Please don't call it the 'thing,'" said Karen. He saw into her divided loyalty. And his comfort was to know that she didn't like the Bouddha either.
"I won't," he promised. "It isn't a thing, but a duty, a privilege, a responsibility. He shall stay here, where he is. He really won't crowd us too impossibly, and that sofa can go."
"You see," said Karen, and tears now came to her eyes, "it would hurt her so dreadfully if she could dream that we did not love it very, very much."
"I know," said Gregory, kissing her. "I perfectly understand. We will love it very, very much. Come now, you must be hungry; let us have our tea."