United States or Egypt ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But you were right about her. And I'm your friend and I'm Karen's friend, and it pretty near killed me when all this happened."
Sometimes Liot sat with dry eyes, listening to Karen's sweet hopes of their reunion; sometimes he laid his head upon her pillow and wept such tears as leave life ever afterward dry at its source. And the root of this bitterness was Bele Trenby.
Drew continued, and he looked at the one of Karen's hands that was visible, emerging from the shawl to clasp her elbow, the left hand with its wedding-ring, "and ludicrous as it may seem to you, I can't but feel that I understand you a great deal better than she does. She still thinks of you as a child a child whose little problems can be solved by facile solutions.
He gathered, too, from Karen's confidences, how little, until now, he had gauged the variety of the great woman's resources, how little done justice to her capacity for being merely delightful. She could be whimsically gay in the midst of melancholy, and her jests and merriment were the more touching, the more exquisite, from the fact that they flowered upon the dark background of the cave.
Its contemplative placidity might have been inviting another sad and wise old woman to recognize these facts of life with her. Karen's mood, while she listened to her, was hardening to the iron of her final realization, the realization that had divided her and Gregory. "It isn't so with us, Mrs. Talcott," she said. "He has shown himself a man I cannot live with. None of our feelings are the same.
She went to the piano, and seating herself began to play the Wohltemperirtes Clavier. Six days had passed since Karen's disappearance. The country had been searched; London, still, was being examined, and the papers were beginning to break into portraits of the missing girl.
These accusations were not without effect. Liot believed his rival capable of any meanness. But it was not the question of money that at this hour angered him; it was Karen's tears; it was Karen's sense of shame in being sent from the home of her only relative, and the certain knowledge that the story would be in every one's mouth.
Karen now sobbed helplessly, leaning forward, her face in her hands, and Madame von Marwitz, again laying an arm around her shoulders, gazed with majestic sorrow into the fire. "Even so," she said at last, when Karen's sobs had sunken to long, broken breaths; "even so. It is the law of life. Sacrifice: sacrifice: to the very end. Life, to the artist, must be this altar where he lays his joys.
When Gregory and his wife were left alone together, they stood for some moments without speaking on either side of the fire, and, as Karen's eyes were on the flames, Gregory, looking at her carefully, read on her face the signs of stress and self-command.
He accuses Tante of dreadful things. It is hatred that he feels for her. He has confessed it." The colour had risen to Karen's cheeks and burned there as she spoke. "Well now!" Mrs. Talcott imperturbably ejaculated. "You can see that I could not live with a man who hated Tante," said Karen. "What sort of things for instance?" Mrs. Talcott took up her former statement. "How can I tell you, Mrs.
Word Of The Day