It was past ten when Karen returned and his mood of latent hostility melted when he saw how tired she looked and how unhappy. She, too, had steeled herself in advance against something that she expected to find in him and he was thankful to feel that she wouldn't find it. She was to find him suave and acquiescent; he would consent without a murmur to Madame von Marwitz's plan for the week-end. "Darling, I'm so sorry that she's ill, your guardian," he said, taking her hat and coat from her as she sank wearily on the sofa. "How is she now?" She looked up at him in the rosy light of the electric lamps and her face showed no temporizing recognitions or gratitudes. "Gregory," she said abruptly, "do you mind--does it displease you--if I go with Tante next Saturday to stay with some friends of hers?" "Mind? Why should I?" said Gregory, standing before her with his hands in his pockets. "I'd rather have you here, of course. I've been feeling a little deserted lately. But I want you to do anything that gives you pleasure." She studied him. "Betty thought it a wrong thing for me to do. She hurt Tante's feelings deeply this afternoon. She spoke as if she had some authority to come between you and me and between me and Tante. I am very much displeased with her," said Karen, with her strangely mature decision. The moment had come, decisively, not to sacrifice Betty. "Betty sees things more conventionally and perhaps more wisely," he said, "than you or I--or Madame von Marwitz, even, perhaps. She feels a sense of responsibility towards you--and towards me. Anything she said she meant kindly, I'm sure." Karen listened carefully as though mastering herself. "Responsibility towards me? Why should she? I feel none towards her." "But, my dear child, that wouldn't be in your place," he could not control the ironic note. "You are a younger woman and a much more inexperienced one. It's merely as if you'd married into a family where there was an elder sister to look after you." Karen's eyes dwelt on him and her face was cold, rocky. "Do you forget, as she does, that I have still with me a person who, for years, has looked after me, a person older still and more experienced still than the little Betty? I don't need any guidance from your sister; for I have my guardian to tell me, as she always has, what is best for me to do. It is impertinent of Betty to imagine that she has any right to interfere. And she was more than impertinent. I had not wished to tell you; but you must understand that Betty has been insolent." "Come, Karen; don't use such unsuitable words. Hasty perhaps; not insolent. Betty herself has told me all about it." A steely penetration came to Karen's eyes. "She has told you? She has been here?" "Yes." "She complained of Tante to you?" "She thinks her wrong." "And you; you think her wrong?"