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Gregory had observed this fact and had hoped that it might have escaped Karen's notice. To the Lavingtons Mrs. Talcott's platter had been unrecognizable and they had tended to let its contents alone.
"It's as I said, you know," he put forward a mitigation; "they've not been trained to see differences; she is very different, isn't she?"
"Well, but so am I," said Karen, "and they talked to me. I don't mean to complain of your friends; that would be very rude when they were so nice and kind; and, besides, are your friends. But people's thoughtlessness displeases me, not that I am not often very thoughtless myself."
Gregory was anxious to exonerate himself. "I hope she didn't feel left out;" he said. "I did notice that she wasn't talking. I found her in the garden, alone--she seemed to be enjoying that, too--and she and I went about for quite a long time together."
"I know you did," said Karen. "You are not thoughtless. As for her, one never knows what she feels. I don't think that she does feel things of that sort at all; she has been used to it all her life, one may say; but there's very little she doesn't notice and understand. She understands--oh, perfectly well--that she is a queer old piece of furniture standing in the background, and one has to remember not to treat her like a piece of furniture. It's a part of grace and tact, isn't it, not to take such obvious things for granted. You didn't take them for granted with her, or with me," said Karen, smiling her recognition at him. "For, of course, to most people I am furniture, too; and if Tante is about, there is, of course, nothing to blame in that; everybody becomes furniture when Tante is there."
"Oh no; I can't agree to that," said Gregory. "Not everybody."
"You know what I mean," Karen rejoined. "If you will not agree to it for me, it is because from the first you felt me to be your friend; that is different." They were walking in the flagged garden where the blue campanulas were now safely established in their places and the low afternoon sun slanted in among the trees. Karen still wore her hat and motoring veil and the smoky grey substance flowed softly back about her shoulders. Her face seemed to emerge from a cloud. It had always to Gregory's eyes the air of steadfast advance; the way in which her hair swept back and up from her brows gave it a wind-blown, lifted look. He glanced at her now from time to time, while, in a meditative and communicative mood, she continued to share her reflections with him. Gregory was very happy.
This was indeed hard on the Lavingtons; but Gregory was not thinking of the Lavingtons, who could take care of themselves. He was wondering, as he more and more wondered, about Madame von Marwitz, and what she saw and what she permitted herself not to see.
"You aren't invisible to her sometimes?" he inquired.
Her innocence before his ironies made him ashamed always of having spoken them. "It is just that that makes me feel sometimes so badly about Mrs. Talcott," she answered now; "just because she is, in a sense, sometimes invisible, and I'm not. Mrs. Talcott, of course, counts for a great deal more in the way of comfort and confidence than I do; I don't believe that Tante really is as intimate with anybody in the world as with Mrs. Talcott; but she doesn't count as much as I do, I am nearly sure, in the way of tenderness. I really think that in the way of tenderness I am nearer than anybody."
They left the flagged garden now, and came down to a lower terrace. Here the sun shone fully; they walked to and fro in the radiance. "Of course," Karen continued to define and confide, "as far as interest goes any one of her real friends counts for more than I do, and you mustn't think that I mean to say that I believe myself the most loved; not at all. But I am the tender, home thing in her life; the thing to pet and care for and find waiting. It is that that is so beautiful for me and so tragic for her."
"Why tragic?"
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