Gregory closed the volume. Madame von Marwitz's attitude as she leaned back, her arms lightly folded, affected him in its deliberate grace and power as newly significant. Keeping his frosty, observant eyes upon her, Gregory waited for what she had to say. "I am glad, very glad, that you have given me this opportunity for a quiet conversation," so she took up the threads of her intention. "I have wanted, for long, to consult with you about various matters concerning Karen, and, in especial, about her future life. Tell me--this is what I wish in particular to ask you--you are going, are you not, in time, when she has learned more skill in social arts, to take my Karen into the world--_dans le monde_," Madame von Marwitz repeated, as though to make her meaning genially clear. "Skill she is as yet too young to have mastered--or cared to master. But she had always been at ease on the largest stage, and she will do you credit, I assure you." It was rather, to Gregory's imagination--always quick at similes--as though she had struck a well-aimed blow right in the centre of a huge gong hanging between them. There she was, the blow said. It was this she meant. No open avowal of hostility could have been more reverberating or purposeful, and no open avowal of hostility would have been so sinister. But Gregory, though his ears seemed to ring with the clang of it, was ready for her. He, too, with folded arms, sat leaning back and he, too, smiled genially. "That's rather crushing, you know," he made reply, "or didn't you? Karen is in my world. This is my world." Madame von Marwitz gazed at him for a moment as if to gauge his seriousness. And then she turned her eyes on his world and gazed at that. It was mildly chatting. It was placid, cheerful, unaware of deficiency. It thought that it was enjoying itself. It was, indeed, enjoying itself, if with the slightest of materials. Betty and Bertram Fraser laughed together; Lady Mary and Oliver ever so slowly conversed. Constance Byng and Mr. Overton discussed the latest opera, young Byng had joined Karen and the General, and a comfortable drone of politics came from Mrs. Overton and Mr. Canning-Thompson. Removed a little from these groups Lady Montgomery, very much like a turtle, sat with her head erect and her eyes half closed, evidently sleepy. It was upon Lady Montgomery that Madame von Marwitz's gaze dwelt longest. "You are contented," she then said to Gregory, "with these good people; for yourself and for your wife?" "Perfectly," said Gregory. "You see, Karen has married a commonplace person." Madame von Marwitz paused again, and again her eyes dwelt on Lady Montgomery, whose pink feathers had given a sudden nod and then serenely righted themselves. "I see," she then remarked. "But she is not contented."