Mrs. Talcott still paused and still looked down, as if deeply pondering. "I've done a lot of thinking about that very point, Karen," she said. "And I don't know as I've made up my mind yet. It's a mighty intricate question. Perhaps we've all got only so much will-power and when most of it is ladled out into one thing there's nothing left to ladle out into the others. That's the way I try, sometimes, to figure it out to myself. Mercedes has got a powerful sight of will-power; but look at all she's got to use up in her piano-playing. There she is, working up to the last notch all the time, taking it out of herself, getting all wrought up. Well, to live so as you won't be spoiling things for other people needs about as much will-power as piano-playing, I guess, when you're as big a person as Mercedes and want as many things. And if you ain't got any will-power left you just do the easiest thing; you just take what you've a mind to; you just let yourself go in every other way to make up for the one way you held yourself in. That's how it is, perhaps." "But Mrs. Talcott," said Karen in a low voice, "all this--about me and my husband--has come because Tante has thought too much of us and too little of herself. It would have been much easier for her to let us alone and not try and make Gregory like her. I do not recognise her in what you are saying. You are saying dreadful things." "Well, dreadful things have happened, I guess," said Mrs. Talcott. "I want you to go back to your nice husband, Karen." "No; no. Never. I can never go back to him," said Karen, walking on. "Because he hates Mercedes?" "Not only that. No. He is not what I thought. Do not ask me, Mrs. Talcott. We do not love each other any longer. It is over." "Well, I won't say anything about it, then," said Mrs. Talcott, who, walking beside her, kept her hand on her arm. "Only I liked Mr. Jardine. I took to him right off, and I don't take to people so easy. And I take to you, Karen, more than you know, I guess. And I'll lay my bottom dollar there's some mistake between you and him, and that Mercedes is the reason of it." They had reached the house. "But wait," said Karen, turning to her. She laid both her hands on the old woman's arm while she steadied her voice to speak this last thought. "Wait. You are so kind to me, Mrs. Talcott; but you have made everything strange--and dreadful. I must ask you--one question, Mrs. Talcott. You have been with Tante all her life. No one knows her as you do. Tell me, Mrs. Talcott. You love Tante?" They faced each other at the top of the steps, on the verandah. And the young eyes plunged deep into the old eyes, passionately searching. For a moment Mrs. Talcott did not reply. When she did speak, it was decisively as if, while recognising Karen's right to ask, Karen must recognise that the answer must suffice. "I'd be pretty badly off if I didn't love Mercedes. She's all I've got in the world." CHAPTER XXXIII