"Kaethe's grieving for Carli just as if he were her only child," and both childless women, soft as their hearts were, looked at each other not quite understanding.
"You ought to see the wreath of white roses that Fanny brought and coffee and cake. She was so sweet. She kissed Kaethe, in that way of hers ... you know, and when she knelt by Carli she wept as if her heart was going to break. She was always so fond of children when she was a girl. She would kneel awhile by Carli and then she would come back to Kaethe. She kept saying she should have done more, that she was a wretch, a monster, you know how she is, and it ended by Kaethe's comforting her. I made coffee for them all."
"I thought she'd go when she knew," began Corinne slowly, to add suddenly as a child, with a wondering look: "Tante Ilde, I don't understand anything about anything."
Though her aunt returned her gaze there was no answer in it. She didn't understand the least beginning of anything either.
"I'm going to Fanny's for dinner tomorrow," she said at last picking up the thought at its only concrete point. And this time there was no blush in her face. Why always blush about Fanny?
"To Fanny's tomorrow?" Corinne echoed quickly and turned a deep scarlet, the color flooding her face to disappear under the low brim of her hat. Tante Ilde at Fanny's! It was the ultimate disorder in their upset world, the rest of them, yes, any, all of them if need be, but not Tante Ilde. There was something snow-white about Tante Ilde. Three score years and ten in a grimy world had left on her no slightest smirch, and even now in the process of her despoilment she was at times blindingly white. That whiteness was the one ornament she still wore and became her exceedingly.
"You can't, you mustn't," said Corinne slowly after a moment.
"I can, I must," answered Tante Ilde firmly, finding herself suddenly in a new position, far the other side of both good and evil. "She didn't want me to—at first,—but I begged her so. She brought me back from Kaethe's in a taxi last night. Corinne, I knew when I went there again that I was going to be brought back, that I wouldn't have to walk, though I couldn't know it would be Fanny.... She threw her arms around me and wept and said she was miserable herself, that she would be better off dead."
Neither of the two women let themselves wonder what her griefs were ... Fanny's griefs....
"I thought tomorrow you would go to some nice little café or just buy something for yourself and eat it at Irma's," continued Corinne lamely for one so generally adequate.