Gregory paused and looked at the young girl on the sofa, his wife. There was that in her attitude, exhausted yet unappealing, in her face, weary yet implacable, which, while it made her seem pitiful to him, made her also almost a stranger; this armed hostility towards himself, who loved her, this quickness of resentment, this cold assurance of right. He could understand and pity; but he, too, was tired and overwrought. What had he done to deserve such a look and such a tone from her except endure, with unexampled patience, the pressure upon his life, soft, unremitting, sinister, of something hateful to him and menacing to their happiness? What, above all, was his place in this deep but narrow young heart? It seemed filled with but one absorbing preoccupation, one passion of devotion. He turned from her and went to the mantelpiece, and shifting the vases upon it as he spoke, remembering with a bitter upper layer of consciousness how Madame von Marwitz's blighting gaze had rested upon these ornaments in her first visit;--"I'm not going to discuss your guardian with you, Karen," he said; "I haven't said that I thought her wrong. I've consented that you should do as she wishes. You have no right to ask anything more of me. I certainly am not going to be forced by you into saying that I think Betty wrong. If you are not unfair to Betty you are certainly most unfair to me and it seems to me that it is your tendency to be fair to one person only. I'm in no danger of forgetting her control and guidance of your life, I assure you. If you were to let me forget it, she wouldn't. She is showing me now--after telling me the other night what she thought of my _monde_--how she controls you. It's very natural of her, no doubt, and very natural of you to feel her right; and I submit. So that you have no ground of grievance against me." He turned to her again. "And now I think you had better go to bed. You look very tired. I've some work to get through, so I'll say good-night to you, Karen dear." She rose with a curious automatic obedience, and, coming to him, lifted her forehead, like a child, for his kiss. Her face showed, perhaps, a bleak wonder, but it showed no softness. She might be bewildered by this sudden change in their relation, but she was not weakened. She went away, softly closing the door behind her. In their room, Karen stood for a moment before undressing and looked about her. Something had happened, and though she could not clearly see what it was it seemed to have altered the aspect of everything, so that this pretty room, full of light and comfort, was strange to her. She felt an alien in it; and as she looked round it she thought of how her little room at Les Solitudes where, with such an untroubled heart, she had slept and waked for so many years.