Gregory's hand caught hers and, holding it tightly, smiling at her rather tremulously, he said: "I enjoy anything, darling, that makes you happy." "Ah, but," said Karen, her voice keeping its earnest control, "I cannot be happy with you and Tante unless you can enjoy her for yourself. Try to know Tante, Gregory," she went on, now with a little breathlessness; "she wants that so much. One of the first things she asked me when she came back was that I should try to make you care for her. She felt at once--and oh! so did I, Gregory--that something was not happy between you." Her hand holding his tightly, her earnest eyes on his, Gregory felt his blood turn a little cold as he recognized once more the soft, unremitting pressure. It had begun, then, so early. She had asked Karen that when she first came back. "But you see, dearest," he said, trying to keep his head between realizations of Madame von Marwitz's craft and Karen's candour, "I've never been able to feel that Madame von Marwitz wanted me to care for her or to come in at all, as it were. I don't mean anything unkind; only that I imagined that what she did ask of me was to keep outside and leave your relation and hers alone. And that's what I've tried to do." "Oh, you mistake Tante, Gregory, you mistake her." Karen's hand grasped his more tightly in the urgency of her opportunity. "She cared for me too much--yes, it is there that you do not understand--to feel what you think. For she knows that I cannot be happy while you shut yourself away from her." "Then it's not she who shuts me out?" he tried to smile. "No; no; oh, no, Gregory." "I must push in, even when I seem to feel I'm not wanted?" She would not yield to his attempted lightness. "You mustn't push in; you must be in; with us, with Tante and me." "Do you mean literally? I'm to be a third at your _tête-à-têtes_?" "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. He felt able to face the duel at close quarters with Madame von Marwitz as long as Karen let him keep her hand. CHAPTER XXIII Tante arrived on Monday afternoon and the arrival reminded Gregory of the Bouddha's installation; but, whereas the Bouddha had overflowed the drawing-room only, Madame von Marwitz overflowed the flat. A multitude of boxes were borne into the passages where, end to end, like a good's train on a main line, they stood impeding traffic.