Karen gave a strange hoarse cry. She heard herself crying, and the sound of her own voice seemed to waken her again to reality: "Franz! Franz! Franz!" Madame von Marwitz was weeping; her large white shoulders shook with sobs. "Karen," she said, "forgive me! Karen, it is I. Forgive me!" "Franz!" Karen repeated, turning her head away on the pillow. "Karen, you know me?" said Madame von Marwitz. She had lifted her head and she gazed through her tears at the strange, changed, yet so intimately known, profile. It was as if Karen were the more herself, reduced to the bare elements of personality; rocky, wasted, alienated. "Do not kill me, my child," she sobbed, "Listen to me, Karen! I have come to explain all, and to implore for your forgiveness." She possessed herself of one of the hot, emaciated hands. Karen drew it away, but she turned her head towards her. Tante's tears, her words and attitude of abjection, dispersed the nightmare horror. She understood that Tante had come not as a ghastly wraith; not as a pursuing fury; but as a suppliant. Her eyes rested on her guardian and their gaze, now, was like cold, calm daylight. "Why are you here?" she asked. Madame von Marwitz's sobs, at this, broke forth more violently. "You remember our parting, my child! You remember my mad and shameful words! How could I not come!" she articulated brokenly. "Oh, I have sought you in terror, in unspeakable longing! My child--it was a madness. Did you not see it? I went to you at dawn that day to kneel before you, as I kneel now, and to implore your pardon. And you were gone! Oh, Karen--you will listen to me now!" "You need not tell me," said Karen. "I understand." "Ah, no: ah, no:" said Madame von Marwitz, laying her supplicating hand on the sleeve of Karen's nightdress. "You do not understand. How could you--young and cold and flawless--understand my heart, my wild, stained heart, Karen, my fierce and desolate and broken heart. You are air and water; I am earth and fire; how could you understand my darkness and my rage?" She spoke, sobbing, with a sincerity dreadful and irrefragable, as if she stripped herself and showed a body scarred and burning. With all the forces of her nature she threw herself on Karen's pity, tearing from herself, with a humility far above pride and shame, the glamour that had held Karen's heart to hers. Deep instinct guided her spontaneity. Her glamour, now, must consist in having none; her nobility must consist in abasement, her greatness in being piteous.