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"I think we are to be, for I felt you to be my friend from that first moment. But it was at the concert that we met and it was Tante's concert. So that it was not quite on our own. I want it to be through Tante," she went on, "because it pleases me very much to think that we may be great friends, and my happy things have come to me through Tante, always." He came next day and every day.
He opened, carefully, the dressing-room door. She listened, stilling her breaths. He would come to her. They would speak together. He would not leave her when she was so unhappy. Even the thought of Tante's wrongs was effaced by the fear and yearning, and, as the bedroom door opened and Gregory came in, her heart seemed to lift and dissolve in a throb of relief and blissfulness.
And as in the past, despite all the inner desolation, it was easy to assume to this guest of Tante's the attitude so habitual to her of the attendant in the temple, the attendant who, rising from his seat at the door, comes forward tranquilly to greet the worshipper and entertain him with quiet comment until the goddess shall descend. "Did you have a nice drive?" she inquired.
Wheels rolled up and stopped. They often came, during these last days; Tante's purchases were arriving by every post. And the voices below seemed presently to alter in pitch and rhythm, mounting to her in a sonorous murmur, dully rising and falling. Karen listened in indifference. But suddenly there came another sound and this was sharp and near.
They concluded that, papa's patience and tante's pin-money having been gnawed away quite to the rind, there were left open only these few easily-enumerated resorts: to go to work they shuddered; to join Major Innerarity's filibustering expedition; or else why not? to try some games of confidence. At twenty-two one must begin to be something. Nothing else tempted; could that avail?
The fear that had come on the night of her arrival pressed closely on Karen then, but, more closely still, the pain for Tante. Tante's clear dignity was blurred; her image, in its rebuffed and ineffectual autocracy, became hovering, uncertain, piteous.
She practised; she gardened, she walked and read. Of Tante she saw little. She was accustomed to seeing little of Tante, even when Tante was there; quite accustomed to Tante's preoccupations. Yet, through the fog of her own unhappiness, it came to her, like an object dimly perceived, that in this preoccupation of Tante's there was a difference.
"Tante's face when I found her husband's body. And my father's face when he was dying; he did not know what was to become of me; he was quite weak, like a little child, and he cried on my breast. And my mother's face when she died. I have not told you anything of my mother." "Will you? I want to hear everything about you; everything," said Gregory.
"No, Gregory, I do not mean that; but in thought, in sympathy. You will try to know Tante. You will make her feel that you and I are not parted when she is there." She saw it all, all Tante's side, with a dreadful clearness. And it was impossible that she should see what he did. He must submit to seeming blurred and dull, to pretending not to see anything. At all events her hand was in his.
Gardening, and reading; and quiet times with Tante and Tallie. Though, for the moment, I must be much with my guest; I am helping him with his work. He has talent, yes; it is a strange and complicated nature. You did not expect to find him here?" Karen held Tante's hand and her gaze was innocent of surmise. Mr. Drew had never entered her thoughts. "No. Yes. No, Tante. He came with you?"
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