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Updated: May 24, 2025
Karen's face lighted up with a happy smile, and a fire of hope was kindled in her heart which made the long hours shorter, and the hard work at the gymnasium easier to bear. It was the day before Christmas, such a busy day in the Ekman household.
Madame von Marwitz had not been able to keep from her beyond the evening of the first day that Franz had gone. "To Germany, my Karen, where he will wait for you." Karen's eyes had dwelt widely, but dully, on her when she made this announcement and she had spoken no word; nor had she made any comment on Madame von Marwitz's further explanations.
She sat thus for some moments, struggling against the invading weakness. When she looked up again, the flame whose up-leaping had so arrested her, which had, to be just, so horrified her, was fallen to ashes. Karen's eyes were closed. A bitter composure, like that sometimes seen on the face of the dead, folded her lips.
"This means one of her terrible headaches and we were to have dined out. I must telephone excuses at once." "I wish I hadn't had to make you think me such a pig," said Betty. "I don't think you a pig," said Mrs. Forrester, "but I do think you a very mistaken and a very unwise woman. And I do beg you, for Gregory and for Karen's sake, to be careful what you do."
It was the afternoon that Karen had promised to Betty, and when this fact had been made known to Tante it was no grievance and no protest that she showed, only a slight hesitation, a slight gravity, and then, as if with cheerful courage in the face of an old sadness: "Eh bien," she said. "Bring her back here to tea, ma chérie. So I shall come to know this new friend of my Karen's better."
But before it could be eaten, each one must first taste the dainties on the smörgåsbord, a side-table set out with a collection of relishes. There was a tiny lump in Karen's throat when she ate a bit of her mother's cheese; but she swallowed them both bravely, and was as gay as any one at the dinner table. All the boys and girls in Sweden are sent to bed early on Christmas Eve.
You don't believe in convention, and in your guardian's world you will meet many men who don't." "What do you mean by criminal folly?" "I mean living with a man you're not married to." He had simply and sincerely forgotten something. Karen's face grew ashen. "You mean that my mother was a criminal?" Even at this moment of his despair Gregory was horribly sorry.
And hope, beautiful, strange hope, linking itself to the intuitions of the dawn when he had sat above Karen's sleep, stole into his heart. Why could it not be true? Why should not Karen come to love him? She would be with him, free, knowing how deep and tender was his love for her, and that it made no claim. Would not her heart answer his one day?
"Good-bye," the two little girls said to each other, and Karen went down to the landing-place to watch the launch steam away. Gerda stood quietly beside the rail, looking back at the island, long after Karen's rainbow skirt and the lighthouse had faded from sight. "I will give you two öre for your thoughts, if they are worth it," her father said at last.
Now the old lady was sick, and it was said she could not recover. She must be nursed and waited upon, and there was no one whose duty it was so much as Karen's. But there was a great ball in the city, to which Karen was invited.
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