"Oh, but you do not understand! I have made you angry! Oh, please, Mrs. Jardine;" his voice rose to sharp distress. He caught her hand with a supplicating yet determined grasp. "You can't understand. You are so inconceivably unaware. It is because of you; all because of you. Haven't you really seen or understood? She can't forgive you because I love you. I love you, you adorable child. I have only stayed on and borne with her because of you!" His passion flamed before her frozen face. And as, for a transfixed moment of stupor, she stood still, held by him, he read into her stillness the pause of the woman to whom the apple of the tree of life is proffered, amazed, afraid, yet thrilled through all her being, tempted by the very suddenness, incapable of swift repudiation. He threw his arms around her, taking, in a draught of delight, the impression of silvery, glacial loveliness that sent dancing stars of metaphor streaming in his head, and pressed his lips to her cheek. It was but one moment of attainment. The thrust that drove him from her was that, indeed, of the strong young goddess, implacable and outraged. Yet even as he read his deep miscalculation in her aspect he felt that the moment had been worth it. Not many men, not even many poets, could say that they had held, in such a scene, on such a night, an unwilling goddess to their breast. She did not speak. Her eyes did not pause to wither. They passed over him. He had an image of the goddess wheeling to mount some chariot of the sky as, with no indignity of haste, she turned from him. She turned. And in the path, in the entrance to the flagged garden, Tante stood confronting them. She stood before them in the moonlight with a majesty at once magnificent and ludicrous. She had come swiftly, borne on the wings of a devouring suspicion, and she maintained for a long moment her Medusa stare of horror. Then, it was the ugliest thing that Karen had ever seen, the mask broke. Hatred, fury, malice, blind, atavistic passions distorted her face. It was to fall from one nightmare to another and a worse; for Tante seized her by the shoulders and shook and shook and shook her, till the blood sprang and rang in her ears and eyeballs, and her teeth chattered together, and her hair, loosened by the great jerks, fell down upon her shoulders and about her face. And while she shook her, Tante snarled--seeming to crush the words between her grinding teeth, "Ah! _perfide! perfide! perfide!_" From behind, other hands grasped Karen's shoulders. Mr. Drew grappled with Tante for possession of her. "Leave me--with my guardian," she gathered her broken breath to say. She repeated it and Mr. Drew, invisible to her, replied, "I can't. She'll tear you to pieces." "Ah! You have still to hear from me--vile seducer!" Madame von Marwitz cried, addressing the young man over Karen's shoulder. "Do you dare dispute my right to save her from you--foul serpent! Leave us! Does she not tell you to leave us?"