"Who says so?" asked Mrs. Talcott.

"Don't imagine that I'd have accepted her guardian's word for it," said Gregory, "but everything Madame von Marwitz has written has been merely corroborative. She told us that Karen was there with this man and I knew it already. She said that Karen had begun to look to him as a rescuer from me on the day she saw him here in London, and what I remembered of that day bore it out. She said that I should remember that on the night we parted Karen told me that she would try to set herself free. Karen has confided in her; it was true. And it's true, isn't it, that Karen was in terror of falling into my hands. You can't deny this, can you? Why should I torture Karen and myself by seeing her?" said Gregory. He had averted his eyes as he spoke.

"But do you want her back, Mr. Jardine?" Mrs. Talcott had faced his catalogue of evidence immovably.

"Not if she loves this man," said Gregory. "And that's the final fact. I know Karen; she couldn't have done this unless she loved him. The provocation wasn't extreme enough otherwise. She wouldn't, from sheer generosity, disgrace herself to free me, especially since she knew that I considered that that would be to disgrace me, too. No; her guardian's story has all the marks of truth on it. She loves the man and she had planned to meet him. And all I've got to do now is to see that she is free to marry him as soon as possible." He got up as he spoke and walked up and down the room.

Mrs. Talcott's eye followed him and his despair seemed a fuel to her faith. "Mr. Jardine," she said, after a moment of silence, "I'll stake my life on it you're wrong. I know Karen better than you do; I guess women understand each other better than a man ever understands them. The bed-rock fact about a woman is that she'll hide the thing she feels most and she'll say what she hopes ain't true so as to give the man a chance for convincing her it ain't true. And the blamed foolishness of the man is that he never does. He just goes off, sick and mournful, and leaves her to fight it out the best she can. Karen don't love Franz Lippheim, Mr. Jardine; nothing'll make me believe she loves him. And nothing'll make me believe but what you could have got her to stay that time she left you if you'd understood women better. She loves you, Mr. Jardine, though she mayn't know it, and it's on the cards she knows it so well that she's dead scared of showing it. Because Karen's a wife through and through; can't you see it in her face? You're youngish yet, and a man, so I don't feel as angry with you as you deserve, perhaps, for not understanding better and for letting Karen get it into her head you didn't love her any more; for that's what she believes, Mr. Jardine. And what I'm as sure of as that my name's Hannah Talcott is that she'll never get over you. She's that kind of woman; a rare kind; rocky; she don't change. And if she's gone and done this thing, like it appears she has, it isn't in the way Mercedes says; it's only to set you free and to get away from the fear of being handed over to a man who don't love her. For she didn't understand, either, Mr. Jardine. Women are blamed foolish in their way, too."

Gregory had stopped in his walk and was standing before Mrs. Talcott looking down at her; and while Mrs. Talcott fixed the intense blue of her eyes upon him he became aware of an impression almost physical in its vividness. It was as if Mrs. Talcott were the most wise, most skilful, most benevolent of doctors who, by some miraculous modern invention, were pumping blood into his veins from her own superabundance. It seemed to find its way along hardened arteries, to creep, to run, to tingle; to spread with a radiant glow through all his chilled and weary body. Hope and fear mounted in him suddenly.

He could not have said, after that, exactly what happened, but he could afterwards recall, brokenly, that he must have shed tears; for his first distinct recollection was that he was leaning against the end of the piano and that Mrs. Talcott, who had risen, was holding him by the hand and saying: "There now, yes, I guess you've had a pretty bad time. You hang on, Mr. Jardine, and we'll get her back yet."

He wanted to put his head on Mrs. Talcott's shoulder and be held by her to her broad breast for a long time; but, since such action would have been startlingly uncharacteristic of them both, he only, when he could speak, thanked her.

"What shall I do, now?" he asked. He was in Mrs. Talcott's hands. "It's no good writing to Karen. Madame von Marwitz will intercept my letter if what you believe is true. Shall we go down to the New Forest directly? Shall I force my way in on Karen?"

"That's just what you'll have to do; I don't doubt it," said Mrs. Talcott. "And I'll go with you, to manage Mercedes while you get hold of Karen. And I'm not fit for it till I've had a night's rest, so we'll go down first thing to-morrow, Mr. Jardine. I'm spending the night here so as we can talk it all out to-night. But first I'm going round to Mrs. Forrester's. If I'm right, Mr. Jardine, and there ain't any 'if' about it in my own mind, it's important that people should know what the truth is now, before we go. We don't want to have to seem to work up a story to shield Karen if she comes back to you. I'm going to Mrs. Forrester's and I'm going to that mighty silly woman, Miss Scrotton, and I'll have to tell them a thing or two that'll make them sit up."

"But wait first, you must be so tired. Do have some tea first," Gregory urged, as the indomitable old woman made her way towards the door. "And what can you say to them, after all? We are sure of nothing."

Mrs. Talcott paused with her hand on the door knob; "I'm sure of one thing, and they've got to hear it; and that is that Mercedes treated Karen so bad she had to go. Mercedes isn't going to get let off that. I told her so. I told her I'd come right up and tell her friends about her if she stole a march on me, and that's what she's done. Yes," said Mrs. Talcott, opening the door, "I've cut loose from my moorings and Mercedes's friends have got to hear the truth of that story and I'm going to see that they do right away. Good-bye, Mr. Jardine. I don't want any tea; I'll be back in time for dinner, I guess."



CHAPTER XLVI

Peace had descended upon the little room where Karen lay, cold, still peace. There were no longer any tears or clamour, no appeals and agonies. Tante was often with her; but she seldom spoke now and Karen had ceased to feel more than a dull discomfort when she came into the room.

Tante smiled at her with the soft, unmurmuring patience of her exile, she tended her carefully, she told her that in a day or two, at furthest, they would be out at sea in the most beautiful of yachts. "All has been chosen for my child," she said. "The nurse meets us at Southampton and we wing our way straight to Sicily."

Karen was willing that anything should be done with her except the one thing. It had surprised her to find how much it meant to Tante that she should consent to go back to her. It had not been difficult to consent, when she understood that that was all that Tante wanted and why she wanted it so much. It was the easier since in her heart she believed that she was dying.

All these days it had been like holding her way through a whirlpool. The foam and uproar of the water had beat upon her fragile bark of life, had twisted it and turned it again and again to the one goal where she would not be. Tante had been the torrent, at once stealthy and impetuous, and the goal where she had wished to drive her had been marriage to Franz. Karen had known no fear of yielding, it would have been impossible to her to yield; yet she had thought sometimes that the bark would crack under the onslaught of the torrent and she be dragged down finally to unconsciousness.

All that torment was over. She seemed to be sliding rapidly and smoothly down a misty river. She could see no banks, no sky; all was white, soft, silent. There was no strength left in her with which to struggle against the thought of death, no strength with which to fear it.

But, as she lay in the little room, her hands folded on her breast, corpse-like already in her placidity, something wailed within her and lamented. And sometimes tears rose slowly and swelled her eyelids and she felt herself a creature coffined and underground, put away and forgotten, though not yet a creature dead. Her heart in the darkness still lived and throbbed. Thoughts of Gregory were with her always, memories of him and of their life together which, now that she had lost him forever, she might cherish. She felt, though she lay so still, that she put out her hands always, in supplication, to Gregory. He would forget her, or remember her only as his disgrace. It seemed to her that if she could feel Gregory lean to her and kiss her forehead in tenderness and reconciliation her breath could sweetly cease.

The day before the departure was come and it was a warm, quiet afternoon. Tante had been with her in the morning, engaged in preparations for the journey. She had brought to show to Karen the exquisite nightgowns and wrappers, of softest wool and silk, that she was to wear on the yacht. The long cloak, too, of silk all lined with swansdown, such a garment as the tenderest, most cherished of mortals should wear. This was for Karen when she lay on deck in the sun. And there was a heavier fur-lined cloak for chilly days and the loveliest of shoes and stockings and scarves. All these things Tante had sent for for Karen, and Karen thanked her, as she displayed them before her, gently and coldly. She felt that Tante was piteous at these moments, but nothing in her was moved towards her. Already she was dead to Tante.

She was alone now, again, and she would not see Tante till tea-time. Tante had asked her if she could sleep and she had said yes. She lay with eyes closed, vaguely aware of the sounds that rose to her from the room beneath, where Tante was engaged with the landlady in arranging the new possessions in boxes, and of the fainter sounds from the road in front of the house. Wheels rolled up and stopped. They often came, during these last days; Tante's purchases were arriving by every post. And the voices below seemed presently to alter in pitch and rhythm, mounting to her in a sonorous murmur, dully rising and falling. Karen listened in indifference.

But suddenly there came another sound and this was sharp and near.

There was only one window in the little room; it was open, and it looked out at the back of the house over a straggling garden set round with trees and shrubberies. The sound was outside the window, below it and approaching it, the strangest sound, scratching, cautious, deliberate.

Karen opened her eyes and fixed them on the window. The tree outside hardly stirred against the blue spring sky. Someone was climbing up to her window.

She felt no fear and little surprise. She wondered, placidly, fixing her eyes upon the patterned square of blue and green. And upon this background, like that of some old Italian picture, there rose the head and shoulders of Mrs. Talcott.

Karen raised herself on her elbow and stared. The river stopped in its gliding; the mists rolled away; the world rocked and swayed and settled firmly into a solid, visible reality; Mrs. Talcott's face and her round black straw hat and her black caped shoulders, hoisting themselves up to the window-sill. Never in her life was she to forget the silhouette on the sky and the branching tree, nor Mrs. Talcott's resolute, large, old, face, nor the gaze that Mrs. Talcott's eyes fixed on her as she came.

Mrs. Talcott put her knee on the window-sill and then struggled for a moment, her foot engaged in the last rung of the ladder; then she turned and stepped down backwards into the room.

Karen, raised on her elbow, was trembling.

"Lay down, honey," said Mrs. Talcott, gently and gravely, as they looked at each other; and, as she came towards the bed, Karen obeyed her and joined her hands together. "Oh, will you come with us?" she breathed. "Will you stay with me? I can live if you stay with me, Mrs. Talcott—dear Mrs. Talcott."

She stretched out her hands to her, and Mrs. Talcott, sitting down on the bed beside her, took her in her arms.

"You're all right, now, honey. I'm not going to leave you," she said, stroking back Karen's hair.

Karen leaned her head against her breast, and closed her eyes.

"Listen, honey," said Mrs. Talcott, who spoke in low, careful tones: "I want to ask you something. Do you love Franz Lippheim? Just answer me quiet and easy now. I'm right here, and you're as safe as safe can be."

Karen, on Mrs. Talcott's breast, shook her head. "Oh, no, Mrs. Talcott; you could not believe that. Why should I love dear Franz?"

"Then it's only so as to set your husband free that you're marrying Franz?" Mrs. Talcott went on in the same even voice.

"But no, Mrs. Talcott," said Karen, "I am not going to marry Franz." And now she lifted her head and looked at Mrs. Talcott. "Why do you ask me that? Who has told you that I am to marry Franz?"

Mrs. Talcott, keeping an arm around her, laid her back on the pillow.

"But, Karen, if you run off like that with Franz and come here and stay as his wife," she said, "and get your husband to divorce you by acting so, it's natural that people should think that you're going to marry the young man, ain't it?"

A burning red had mounted to Karen's wasted cheeks. Her sunken eyes dwelt on Mrs. Talcott with a sort of horror. "It is true," she said. "He may think that; he must think that; because unless he does he cannot divorce me and set himself free, and he must be free, Mrs. Talcott; he has said that he wishes to be free. But I did not run away with Franz. I met him, on the headland, that morning, and he was to take me to his mother, and I was so ill that he brought me here. That was all."

Mrs. Talcott smoothed back her hair. "Take it easy, honey," she said. "There's nothing to worry over one mite. And now I've asked my questions and had my answers, and I've got something to tell. Karen, child, it's all been a pack of lies that Mercedes has told so as to get hold of you, and so as he shouldn't—so as your husband shouldn't, Karen. Listen, honey: your husband loves you just for all he's worth. I've seen him. I went up to him. And he told me how you were all the world to him, and how, if only you didn't love this young man and didn't want to be free, he'd do anything to get you back, and how if you'd done the wicked thing he'd been told and then gotten sorry, he'd want you back just the same because you were his dear wife, and the one woman he loved. But he couldn't force himself on you if you loved someone else and hated him. So I just told him that I didn't believe you loved Franz; and I got him to hope it, too, and we came down together, Karen, and Mercedes is like a lion at bay downstairs, and she's in front of that door that leads up here and swears it'll kill you to see us; and I'd seen the ladder leaning on the wall and I just nipped out while she was talking, and brought it round to what I calculated would be your window and climbed up, and that's what I've come to tell you, Karen, that he loves you, and that he's downstairs, and that he's waiting to know whether you'll see him."

Mrs. Talcott rose and stood by the bed looking down into Karen's eyes. "Honey, I can bring him up, can't I?" she asked.

Karen's eyes looked up at her with an intensity that had passed beyond joy or appeal. Her life was concentrated in her gaze.

"You would not lie to me?" she said. "It is not pity? He loves me?"

"No, I wouldn't lie to you, dearie," said Mrs. Talcott, with infinite tenderness; "lies ain't my line. It's not pity. He loves you, Karen."

"Bring him," Karen whispered. "I have always loved him. Don't let me die before he comes."



CHAPTER XLVII

Mrs. Talcott, as she descended the staircase, heard in the little sitting-room a voice, the voice of Mercedes, speaking on and on, in a deep-toned, continuous roll of vehement demonstration, passionate protest, subtle threat and pleading. Gregory's voice she did not hear. No doubt he stood where she had left him, at the other side of the table, confronting his antagonist.

Mrs. Talcott turned the knob of the door and slightly pushed it. A heavy weight at once was flung against it.

"You shall not come in! You shall not! I forbid it! I will not be disturbed!" cried the voice of Mercedes, who must, in the moment, have guessed that she had been foiled.

"Quit that foolishness," said Mrs. Talcott sternly. She leaned against the door and forced it open, and Mercedes, dishevelled, with eyes that seemed to pant on her like eyes from some dangerous jungle, flung herself once more upon the door and stood with her back against it.

"Mr. Jardine," said Mrs. Talcott, not looking at her recovered captive, "Karen is upstairs and wants to see you. She doesn't love Franz Lippheim and she isn't going to marry him. She didn't run away with him; she met him when she'd run away from her guardian and he was going to take her to his mother, only she got sick and he had to bring her here. She was told that you wanted to divorce her and wanted to be free. She loves you, Mr. Jardine, and she's waiting up there; only be mighty gentle with her, because she's been brought to death's door by all that she's been through."

"I forbid it! I forbid it!" shrieked Madame von Marwitz from her place before the door, spreading her arms across it. "She is mad! She is delirious! The doctor has said so! I have promised Franz that you shall not come to her unless across my dead body. I have sworn it! I keep my promise to Franz!"

Gregory advanced to the door, eyeing her. "Let me pass," he said. "Let me go to my wife."

"No! no! and no!" screamed the desperate woman. "You shall not! It will kill her! You shall be arrested! You wish to kill a woman who has fled from you! Help! Help!" He had her by the wrists and her teeth seized his hands. She fought him with incredible fury.

"Hold on tight, Mr. Jardine," Mrs. Talcott's voice came to him from below. "There; I've got hold of her ankles. Put her down."

With a loud, clashing wail through clenched and grinding teeth, Madame von Marwitz, like a pine-tree uprooted, was laid upon the floor. Mrs. Talcott knelt at her feet, pinioning them. She looked along the large white form to Gregory at the other end, who was holding down Madame von Marwitz's shoulders. "Go on, Mr. Jardine," she said. "Right up those stairs. She'll calm down now. I've had her like this before."

Gregory rose, yet paused, torn by his longing, yet fearful of leaving the old woman with the demoniac creature. But Madame von Marwitz lay as if in a trance. Her lids were closed. Her breast rose and fell with heavy, regular breaths.

"Go on, Mr. Jardine," said Mrs. Talcott. So he left them there.

He went up the little stairs, dark and warm, and smelling—he was never to forget the smell—of apples and dust, and entered a small, light room where a window made a square of blue and green. Beyond it in a narrow bed lay Karen. She did not move or speak; her eyes were fixed on his; she did not smile. And as he looked at her Mrs. Talcott's words flashed in his mind: "Karen's that kind: rocky: she don't change."

But she had changed. She was his as she had never been, never could have been, if the sinister presence lying there downstairs had not finally revealed itself. He knelt beside her and she was in his arms and his head was laid in the old sacred way beside his darling's head. They did not seem to speak to each other for a long time nor did they look into each other's eyes. He held her hand and looked at that, and sometimes kissed it gently. But after words had come and their eyes had dared to meet in joy, Karen said to him: "And I must tell you of Franz, Gregory, dear Franz. He is suffering, I know. He, too, was lied to, and he was sent away without seeing me again. We will write to Franz at once. And you will care for my Franz, Gregory?"

"Yes; I will care for your Franz; bless your Franz," said Gregory, with tears, his lips on her hand.

"He came to me like an angel that morning," Karen said in her breath of voice; "and he has been like a beautiful mother to me; he has taken care of me like a mother. It was on the headland over Falmouth—that he came. Oh, Gregory," she turned her face to her husband's breast, "the birds were beginning to sing and I thought that I should never see you again."



CHAPTER XLVIII

When the door had shut behind Gregory, Madame von Marwitz spoke, her eyes still closed:

"Am I now permitted to rise?"

Mrs. Talcott released her ankles and stood up.

"You've made a pretty spectacle of yourself, Mercedes," she remarked as Madame von Marwitz raised herself with extraordinary stateliness. "I've seen you behave like you were a devil before, but I never saw you behave like you were quite such a fool. What made you fight him and bite him like that? What did you expect to gain by it I'd like to know? As if you could keep that strong young man from his wife."

Madame von Marwitz had walked to the small mirror over the mantelpiece and was adjusting her hair. Her face, reflected between a blue and gold shepherd and shepherdess holding cornucopias of dried honesty, was still ashen, but she possessed all her faculties. "This is to kill Karen," she now said. "And yours will be the responsibility."

"Taken," Mrs. Talcott replied, but with no facetiousness.

Several of the large tortoiseshell pins that held Madame von Marwitz's abundant locks were scattered on the floor. She turned and looked for them, stooped and picked them up. Then returning to the mirror she continued, awkwardly, to twist up and fasten her hair. She was unaccustomed to doing her own hair and even the few days without a maid had given her no facility.

Mrs. Talcott watched her for a moment and then remarked: "You're getting it all screwed round to one side, Mercedes. You'd better let me do it for you."

Madame von Marwitz for a moment made no reply. Her eyes fixed upon her own mirrored eyes, she continued to insert the pins with an air of stubborn impassivity; but when a large loop fell to her neck she allowed her arms to drop. She sank upon a chair and, still with unflawed stateliness, presented the back of her head to Mrs. Talcott's skilful manipulations. Mrs. Talcott, in silence, wreathed and coiled and pinned and the beautiful head resumed its usual outlines.

When this was accomplished Madame von Marwitz rose. "Thank you," she uttered. She moved towards the door of her room.

"What are you going to do now, Mercedes?" Mrs. Talcott inquired. Her eyes, which deepened and darkened, as if all her years of silent watchfulness opened long vistas in them, were fixed upon Mercedes.

"I am going to pack and return to my home," Madame von Marwitz replied.

"Well," said Mrs. Talcott, "you'll want me to pack for you, I expect."

Madame von Marwitz had opened her door and her hand was on the door-knob. She paused so and again, for a long moment, she made no reply. "Thank you," she then repeated. But she turned and looked at Mrs. Talcott. "You have been a traitor to me," she said after she had contemplated her for some moments, "you, in whom I completely trusted. You have ruined me in the eyes of those I love."

"Yes, I've gone back on you, Mercedes, that's a fact," said Mrs. Talcott.

"You have handed Karen over to bondage," Madame von Marwitz went on. "She and this man are utterly unsuited. I would have freed her and given her to a more worthy mate." Her voice had the dignity of a disinterested and deep regret.

Mrs. Talcott made no reply. The long vistas of her eyes dwelt on Mercedes. After another moment of this mutual contemplation Madame von Marwitz closed the door, though she still kept her hand on the door-knob.

"May I ask what you have been saying of me to Mrs. Forrester, to Mr. Jardine?"

"Well, as to Mr. Jardine, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott, "there was no need of saying anything, was there, if I turned out right in what I told him I suspected. He sees I'm right. He'd been fed up, along with the rest of them, on lies, and Karen can help him out with the details if he wants to ask for them. As for the old lady, I gave her the truth of the story about Karen running away. I made her see, and see straight, that your one idea was to keep Karen's husband from getting her back because you knew that if he did the truth about you would come out. I let you down as easy as I could and put it that you weren't responsible exactly for the things you said when you went off your head in a rage and that you were awful sorry when you found Karen had taken you at your word and made off. But that old lady feels mighty sick, Mercedes, and I allow she'll feel sicker when she's seen Mr. Jardine. As for Miss Scrotton, I saw her, too, and she's come out strong; you've got a friend there, Mercedes, sure; she won't believe anything against her beloved Mercedes," a dry smile touched Mrs. Talcott's grave face as she echoed Miss Scrotton's phraseology, "until she hears from her own lips what she has to say in explanation of the story. You'll be able to fix her up all right, Mercedes, and most of the others, too, I expect. I'd advise you to lie low for a while and let it blow over. People are mighty glad to be given the chance for forgetting things against anyone like you. It'll simmer down and work out, I expect, to a bad quarrel you had with Karen that's parted you. And as for the outside world, why it won't mind a mite what you do. Why you can murder your grandmother and eat her, I expect, and the world'll manage to overlook it, if you're a genius."

"I thank you," said Madame von Marwitz, her hand clasping and unclasping the door-knob. "I thank you indeed for your reassurance. I have murdered and eaten my grandmother, but I am to escape hanging because I am a genius. That is a most gratifying piece of information. You, personally, I infer, consider that the penalty should be paid, however gifted the criminal."

"I don't know, Mercedes, I don't know," said Mrs. Talcott in a voice of profound sadness. "I don't know who deserves penalties and who don't, if you begin to argue it out to yourself." Mrs. Talcott, who had seated herself at the other side of the table, laid an arm upon it, looking before her and not at Mercedes, as she spoke. "You're a bad woman; that ain't to be denied. You're a bad, dangerous woman, and perhaps what you've been trying to do now is the worst thing you've ever done. But I guess I'm way past feeling angry at anything you do. I guess I'm way past wanting you to get come up with. I can't make out how to think about a person like you. Maybe you figured it all out to yourself different from the way it looks. Maybe you persuaded yourself to believe that Karen would be better off apart from her husband. I guess that's the way with most criminals, don't you? They figure things out different from the way other people do. I expect you can't help it. I expect you were born so. And I guess you can't change. Some bad folks seem to manage to get religion and that brings 'em round; but I expect you ain't that kind."

Madame von Marwitz, while Mrs. Talcott thus shared her psychological musings with her, was not looking at the old woman: her eyes were fixed on the floor and she seemed to consider.

"No," she said presently. "I am not that kind."

She raised her eyes and they met Mrs. Talcott's. "What are you going to do now?" she asked.

"Well," said Mrs. Talcott, drawing a long sigh of fatigue, "I've been thinking that over and I guess I'll stay over here. There ain't any place for me in America now; all my folks are dead. You know that money my Uncle Adam left me a long time ago that I bought the annuity with. Well, I've saved most of that annuity; I'd always intended that Karen should have what I'd saved when I died. But Karen don't need it now. It'll buy me a nice little cottage somewhere and I can settle down and have a garden and chickens and live on what I've got."

"How much was it, the annuity?" Madame von Marwitz asked after a moment.

"A hundred and ten pounds a year," said Mrs. Talcott.

"But you cannot live on that," Madame von Marwitz, after another moment, said.

"Why, gracious sakes, of course I can, Mercedes," Mrs. Talcott replied, smiling dimly.

Again there was silence and then Madame von Marwitz said, in a voice a little forced: "You have not got much out of life, have you, Tallie?"

"Well, no; I don't expect you would say as I had," Mrs. Talcott acquiesced, showing a slight surprise.

"You haven't even got me—now—have you," Madame von Marwitz went on, looking down at her door-knob and running her hand slowly round it while she spoke. "Not even the criminal. But that is a gain, you feel, no doubt, rather than a loss."

"No, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott mildly; "I don't feel that way. I feel it's a loss, I guess. You see you're all the family I've got left."

"And you," said Madame von Marwitz, still looking down at her knob, "are all the family I have left."

Mrs. Talcott now looked at her. Mercedes did not raise her eyes. Her face was sad and very pale and it had not lost its stateliness. Mrs. Talcott looked at her for what seemed to be a long time and the vistas of her eyes deepened with a new acceptance.

It was without any elation and yet without any regret that she said in her mild voice: "Do you want me to come back with you, Mercedes?"

"Will you?" Madame von Marwitz asked in a low voice.

"Why, yes, of course I'll come if you want me, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott.

Madame von Marwitz now opened her door. "Thank you, Tallie," she said.

"You look pretty tired," Mrs. Talcott, following her into the bedroom, remarked. "You'd better lie down and take a rest while I do the packing. Let's clear out as soon as we can."

THE END