Ernestine worked that winter as she had never worked before. That first day had not been a deceptive one. She had done some of the things which something within her heart assured her that day she could do. The best thing she had done she sent to Laplace, as he had asked her to. "It's considered rather superior to disdain the Salon," she said to Karl, the day they packed the canvas, "but Paris seems the only way of proving to Americans that good can come out of America."

She had heard from Laplace that the picture would be hung. His brief comment had been that America could not be so bad as was sometimes said. She was eager now to hear more about it. She would surely have a letter very soon. And she and Karl were so happy! It had been such a glorious, wholesome, splendidly worth while winter.

It was one afternoon in early spring that over in the laboratory John Beason and Professor Hastings were talking of Dr. Hubers. "But that isn't all of it," said Professor Hastings in the midst of a discussion. "This fanaticism for veracity Huxley talks about isn't all of it by any means. Any of us can get together a lot of facts. It takes the big man to know what the facts mean."

"Somebody said that truth was the soul of facts," said Beason, in the uncertain way he talked of anything outside tabulated knowledge. "But I suppose that's just one of those things people say."

"Yes—but is it? Isn't it true? Why is Hubers greater than the rest of us? It isn't that he works harder. We all work. It isn't that he's more exact. We're all exact. Isn't it that very thing of having a genius for getting the soul out of his facts? That man looks a long way ahead—smells truth away off, as it were. I tell you, Mr. Beason, scientific training kills many men for research work. They're afraid to move more than inch by inch. They won't take any jumps. Now Dr. Hubers jumps; I've seen him do it. Of course, after he's made his jump he goes back and sees that there aren't any ditches in between, but he's not afraid of a leap in the dark. That's his own peculiar gift. Most of us are not made for jumping."

"But that doesn't sound like the scientific method," said Beason, brows knitted.

"I'll admit it wouldn't do for general practice," replied the older man, a twinkle in his eye. "The spirit has to move you, or you wouldn't gain anything but a broken neck."

"Yes, but that thing of a spirit moving you," said Beason, more sure of himself here, "that does not belong in science at all; that is a part of religion."

"And to a man like Dr. Hubers"—very quietly and firmly—"science is religion."

Beason pondered that a minute. "They're entirely distinct," was his conclusion.

"So it seems to you; but I'm a year or two older than you are, Mr. Beason, and the longer I live the more firmly I believe that there is such a thing as an intuitive sense of truth. If there isn't, why is Dr. Hubers a greater man than I am?"—and with that he left him, smiling a little at how it had never occurred to Beason to say anything polite.

Beason was in truth much perturbed. It was not pleasing to have the greatness of his idol explained on unscientific principles. He did not like that idea of the jumps. Jumping sounded unscientific, and what could be worse than to say of a man that he was not scientific? Preposterous to say the greatest things of science were achieved by unscientific methods!

To-day Dr. Hubers had been all afternoon alone in his laboratory. Some one had brought him in some luncheon at noon, but since one o'clock the door had not opened, and now it was almost five. What was going on in there? Even Beason had the imagination to wonder.

Could he have seen he would not have been much enlightened. The man was sitting before a table, his arms reaching out in front of him—some tubes, his microscope, other things he had been working with within reach, but unheeded now. For he was not seeing now the detail, the immediate. This was not one of those moments of advancing step by step. The light in those eyes of wonderful sight was the light from a farther distance. A way had opened ahead; far out across dim places he could see it now. The afternoon had been a momentous one. He had taken a step leading to a greater height, and with the greater height came a wider vision. A few of those minutes such as he was living now fires a man for months—yes, years, of work. Ahead were days when the fires of inspiration would be in abeyance, when the work would be only a working of step by step—detail, some would call it drudgery. But it is in these moments of inspiration man qualifies for the fight. In the hours of working onward toward the light he may grow very weary, but he can never forget that one day, for just a moment, the light opened to him. Moments such as Karl Hubers was living now mark the great man from the small.

And his glowing moment was more than a promise; it was also a reward. It was spring now, and all through the winter he had worked hard. He had come back in the fall determining in the gratitude of his great happiness to do the best work of his life. He pulled his microscope over in front of him and looked over it after the manner of one dreaming. How many days he had come to it eager to note the slightest significance in its variations of colour, for the staining of the slides made colour count in his work almost as it did in Ernestine's, only to be met with the non-essential, more of the husk and no sight of the kernel. He smiled a little to think what a bulky and stupid volume it would make were he to write down all he had done. If each hope, each possibility, each experiment and verification were to be put down, he could quite rival in bulk a government report. And if added to that should be a report of the cases he had watched, the operations he had attended, the attempts at getting living matter and of working with dead, how large and how useless that volume would be were it to contain it all! He had done days and days of useless work to get the slightest thing that was significant.

Only the week before Ernestine had laughingly read him an article one of the popular magazines printed on cancer research. The whole thing is becoming a farce—so said the popular magazine. Every once in a while some man issues a report saying the germ is in sight. Then another man appears with a still more learned report saying it is not a germ at all. All doing different things, and all sure they are on the right track! Meanwhile the disease is on the increase, surgery cannot meet it satisfactorily, and while laboratories pursue the peaceful tenor of their way, men and women are dying hard deaths which no one seems able to stay. Truly, the man behind the microscope is a very slow man the article had concluded.

No doubt that seemed true. He could see the writer's point of view well enough. The things the man behind the microscope did accomplish sounded so very easy that the on-looker could give only indolence and stupidity as the reason for not accomplishing a great deal more.

And even from his own point of view, with his own knowledge of all the facts in the case, he had no doubt that once done it would sound so easy that he would stand amazed to think it had not been done before. Let the unknown become the known, and even the trained worker cannot look upon it as other than a matter of course. It was so easy now to meet diphtheria. Strange they had let so many children die of it! It was so very easy now to give a man an anesthetic. Fearful how they had let a man suffer through every stroke of the knife, or die for need of it! Should he blame the man outside for looking at it that way when even to him things accomplished took on that matter of course aspect?

He began putting away his things. It was Ernestine's birthday, and he had promised to be home early, for they were going to the theatre. "It will be like all the rest," he mused. "Once done, it will seem so easy that we will wonder why it was not done long before." Again the fire leaped high within him. To do it! Perhaps after all he did see it too complexly. He must not let the husk dull his eye to the kernel. A man building a beautiful tower must erect a scaffold. But the scaffolding should not make him forget the tower! Some way in this last hour his mind had seemed to clear. His immense amount of useless work was not hanging about his neck like a millstone. Something had cut that away. He was free from it all. He could feel within himself that his approach to his problem was better than it had been before. Perhaps he had made the mistake of the others of looking at it as something fearfully complex, something it would be the hardest thing in all the world for any man to do. It all looked more simple now. It was as if muscles strained to the point of tenseness had relaxed, and in an easy and natural way he foresaw victory as a logical part of his work.

He was happy to-night, light-hearted. The windows of the laboratory were open to the soft air of that glorious day of early spring, and his spirit was open too, open to the soul of the world, taking unto itself the sweet and simple spirit of the men who have done the greatest things. From his window he could see one of the tennis courts. Some of the students were playing. "Good!" he exclaimed enthusiastically to himself, as he watched a return that had looked impossible. He was glad they were playing tennis. Why shouldn't they?

Professor Hastings heard him whistling softly to himself—a German love song—as he walked through the big laboratory, and catching a glimpse of the younger man's face, he nodded his head and smiled. It had been a good afternoon—that was plain. Now let there be more afternoons like this—and then—to think it should be done right here under his very eyes! Was not that joy enough for any man?

On the steps of the building Karl stopped suddenly, put his hand in his inner pocket and drew out a small box. Yes, it was there all right, and a girl passing up the steps just then was amazed and much fluttered to think Dr. Hubers should be smiling so beautifully at her. In fact, Dr. Hubers did not know that the girl was passing. She had simply been in the direction of his smile; and he was smiling because it was Ernestine's birthday, and because he had so beautiful a present for her. He walked along very fast. He could scarcely wait to see her face when he gave it to her. Too bad he had kept her waiting so long!



CHAPTER XI

PICTURES IN THE EMBERS

They were back home now.

"Why, Mary has intuitions," laughed Ernestine, when she saw that a fire had been lighted in the library, and was in just the proper state for seeing pictures. "A girl who knew we would want a fire has either been in love or ought to be. At any rate, she knows we are."

"This is the kind of a night when a fire serves artistic purposes only. You don't need it, so you have to enjoy it all the more."

"Still, these spring evenings are damp," she insisted, defending the fire. "It doesn't feel at all uncomfortable."

"And looks immense," he added, turning down the gas and pulling up a seat just right for sitting before the fire.

She leaned over, holding her hand so close to the flame that he wondered at first what she was doing.

"See!" she cried, "see my ruby in the firelight, Karl! It's just a piece of it right up here on my hand!"

"And I suppose,"—seeming to be injured—"that during the remainder of my life, I may play second fiddle to that ring. Oh, Ernestine—you're a woman! I was mortified to death at the theatre. You didn't look at the play at all. You just sat and looked down at that ring. Oh, I saw through that thing of not being able to fasten your glove!"

She was twisting her hand about to show off the stone—any woman of any land who has ever owned a ring knows just how to do it.

"See, dear!" she laughed exultantly, "it is fire! You can see things in it just as you can in the coals."

But he was not looking at the ring. There were things to be seen in her face and he was looking at them. He loved this child in her. Was it in all women when they love, he wondered, as many other men have wondered of other women, or was it just Ernestine?

"It was a dreadful thing for you to get it," she scolded,—these affectionate scoldings were a great joy to him. "It's a ridiculous thing for a poor college professor—that's you—to buy a ruby ring. Why, rubies exist just to show millionaires how rich they are! And it's a scandalous thing for a poor man's wife—that's I—to be wearing a real ruby!" Then her other hand went over the ring, and clasping both to her breast she laughed gleefully: "But it's mine! They'll not get it now!"

"Who wants it, foolish child?" he asked, pressing her head to his shoulder and holding the ring hand in his.

She moved a little nearer to him.

"See some pictures for me in the fire," she commanded. "See something nice."

"I see a beautiful lady wearing a beautiful ring. See?—right under that top piece of coal. The ring is growing larger and larger and larger. Now it is so large you can't see the lady at all, just nothing but the ring."

She laughed. "Now see one that isn't silly. See a beautiful one."

"Liebchen, I see two people who are growing old. See?—right down here. One of them must be sixty now, and one about seventy, but they're smiling just as they did when they were young. And they're whispering that they love each other a great deal better now than they did in those days of long ago; that it has grown and grown until it is a bigger thing than the love of youth ever dreamed of."

"That is nice," she murmured happily. "That would be a nice picture to paint." They were silent for a time, perhaps both seeing pictures of their own. "It's growing late," said Ernestine, a little drowsily, "but then, I'll never have this birthday again."

"And it was happy?" he asked tenderly. "Just as happy as you wanted it to be?"

"So happy that I hate to see it go. It was—just right."

"Weren't any of the others happy, dear?"—he was stroking her hair, thinking that it too had caught little touches of the fire-light.

"None of the others were perfect. Of course, last year was our first one together, and"—a shudder ran through her.

"I know, dear," he hastened; "I know that wasn't a perfect day."

"Before that," she went on, after a minute of looking a long way into the fire, "something always happened. My birthday seemed ill-fated. That was why I wanted a happy one so much—to make up for all the others. This day began right by the work going so splendidly. Is there anything much more satisfying than the feeling which comes at the close of a good day's work? It puts you on such good terms with yourself, convinces you that you have a perfect right to be alive. Then this afternoon I read some things which I had read long ago and didn't understand then as I do now. You see, there was a great deal I didn't know before I loved you, Karl; and books are just human enough to want to be met half way."

"Like men," he commented, meeting her then a trifle more than half way.

"Yes, they have to be petted and fussed over, just like men. Now, Karl, are you listening or are you not?"

He assured her that he was listening.

"Then, this afternoon, Georgia came out and we went for a row on the lagoon in Jackson Park. Did you happen to look out and see how beautiful it was this afternoon, Karl? I wish you would do that once in a while. Germs and cells and things aren't so very aesthetic, you know, and I don't like to have you miss things. I was thinking about you as we passed the university. It seemed such a big, wonderful place, and I love to think of what it is your work really means. I am so proud of you, Karl!"

"And was it nice down there?" he asked, just to bring her back to her story of the day.

"So beautiful! You and I must go often now that the spring evenings have come. There is one place where you come out from a bridge, and can see the German building, left from the World's Fair, across a great sweep of lights and shadows. People who want to go to Europe and can't, should go down there and look at that. It's so old-worldish.

"Then Georgia and I had a fine talk,"—after another warm, happy silence. "Georgia never was so nice. She was telling me all about a man. I shouldn't wonder; but I mustn't tell even you—not yet. Then I came home and here were the beautiful flowers from Dr. Parkman. Karl—you did tell him! Honest now—you did—and it was awful. Why didn't you put it in the university paper so that all the students could send me things? That nice boy, Harry Wyman, wrote a poem about me—'To the Lovely Lady'—now you needn't laugh! And oh, I don't know, but it all seemed so beautiful and right when I came home this afternoon. I love our house more and more. I love those funny knobs on the doors, and this library seems just us! I was so happy I couldn't keep from singing, and you know I can't sing at all. Then you came home! You had the box out in your hand—I saw it clear across the street. You were smiling just like a boy. I shall never forget how you looked as you gave me the ring. I think, after all, that look was my real birthday gift.—Now, Karl, don't you know you shouldn't have bought such a ring? But, oh!—I, am so happy, sweetheart."

He kissed her. His heart was very full. There was nothing he could say, so he kissed her again and laid his cheek upon her hair.

He knew she was growing sleepy. Sleep was coming to her as it does to the child who has had its long, happy day. But like the child, she would not give up until the last. It was true, he was sure, that she was loath to let the day go.

"The play to-night was very nice," she said, rousing a little, "but so short-sighted."

"Short-sighted, liebchen? How?"

"So many things in literature stop short when the people are married. I think that's such an immature point of view—just as if that were the end of the story. And when they write stories about married people they usually have them terribly unhappy about having to live together, and wishing they could live with some one else. It seems to me they leave out the best part."

"The best part, I suppose, meaning us?"

"Yes!"

"But, dear, if you and I were written up, just as we are, we'd be called two idiots."

"Would we?"—her head was caressing his coat.

"Have you ever thought how a stenographic or phonographic report of some of our conversations would sound?"

"Beautiful," she murmured.

"Crazy!" he insisted.

"Perhaps the world didn't mean people to be so happy as we are,"—her words stumbled drowsily.

"The world isn't as good to many people as it is to us. Oh, sweetheart—why,"—he held her closely but very tenderly, for he knew she was going to sleep—"why are we so happy?"

"Because I'm the—lovely—lady,"—it came from just outside the land of dreams.

It was sweet to have her go to sleep in his arms like this. He trembled with the joy of holding her, looking at her face with eyes of tenderest love, rejoicing in her, worshipping her. He went over the things she had said, his whole being mellowed, divinely exultant, at thought of her going to sleep just because she was tired from her day of happiness. Long ago his mother had taught him to pray, and he prayed now that he might keep her always as she was to-day, that he might guard her ever as she had that sense now of being guarded, that her only weariness might come as this had come, because she was so happy. How beautiful she was as she slept! The Lovely Lady—that boy had said it right, after all. And she was his!—his treasure—his joy—his sweetest thing in life! He had heard a discussion over at the university a few days before about the equality of man and woman. How foolish that seemed in this divine moment! God in His great far-sightedness had given to the world a masculine and a feminine soul. How insane to talk of their being alike, when the highest happiness in life came through their being so entirely different! And she was his! Other men could send her flowers—write poems about her loveliness—but she was his, all his. His to love and cherish and protect—to work for—live for!

He kissed her, and her eyes opened. "Poor little girl's so tired; but she'll have to wake up enough to go to bed."

She smiled, murmured something that sounded like "Happy day," and went to sleep again.

The fire had died low. He sat there a minute longer dreaming before it, thanking God for a home, for work and love and happiness. Then he picked Ernestine up in his arms as one would pick up the little child too tired to walk to bed. "Oh, liebchen," he breathed in tender passion, as she nestled close to him,—"ich liebe dich!"



CHAPTER XII

A WARNING AND A PREMONITION

It put him very much out of patience to have his eyes bothering him just when he was so anxious to work. What in the world was the matter with them, he wondered, as he directed a couple of students on some work they were helping him with. It seemed that yesterday afternoon he had taken a new start; now he was eager to work things out while he felt like this. This was a very inopportune time for a cold, or whatever it was, to settle in his eyes. Perhaps the lights at the theatre last night, and then the wind coming home—but he smiled an intimate little smile with himself at thought of last night and forgot all about that sandy feeling in his eyes.

During the morning it almost passed away. When he thought of it at all, it was only to be thankful it was not amounting to anything, for he was anxious to do a good day's work. He would hate it if anything were to happen to his eyes and he had to wear glasses! He had never had the slightest trouble with them; in fact they had served him so well that he never gave them any thought. The idea came now of how impossible it would be to do anything without them. His work depended entirely on seeing things right; it was the appearance of things in their different stages which told the story.

Dr. Hubers had a queer little trick with his eyes; the students who worked with him had often noticed it. He had a way of resting his finger in the corner of his eye when thinking. Sometimes it would rest in one eye for awhile, and then if he became a little restless, moved under a new thought, he would slip his finger meditatively over his nose to the corner of the other eye. It did not signify anything in particular, merely an unconscious mannerism. Some men pull their hair, others gnaw their under lip, and with him it was a queer little way of rubbing his finger in his eye.

It was Saturday, and that was always a good day for him as he could give all of his time to the laboratory. He was especially anxious to have things go well this morning, as he wanted to stop at two o'clock and go down to one of Dr. Parkman's operations. That end of it was very important and this was to be an especially good operation.

He was thinking about Dr. Parkman on the way down;—of the man's splendid surgery. It was a real joy to see him work. He did big things so very easily and quietly; not at all as though they were overwhelming him. Poor Parkman—things should have gone differently with him. If it had been almost any other man, it would have mattered less, but it seemed a matter of a lifetime with Parkman. He could understand that better now than he once had. To have found Ernestine and then—then to have found she was not Ernestine! But of course in the case of Ernestine that could not be. Now if Parkman had only found an Ernestine—but then he couldn't very well, for there was only one! Since the first of time, there had been only one—and she was his! He fell to dreaming of how she had looked last night in the fire-light, and almost forgot the station at which he was to get off.

He was in very jubilant mood when they went down to Dr. Parkman's office after the operation. It had verified some of his own conclusions; seemed fairly to stand as an endorsement of what he held. He had never felt more sure of himself, had never seen his way more clearly. It was a great thing to have facts bear one out, to see made real what one had believed to be true. He went over it all with Parkman, putting his case clearly, convincingly, his points standing out true and unassailable; throwing away all the irrelevant, picking out unerringly, the little kernel of truth;—a big mind this, a mind qualified to cope with big problems. Dr. Parkman had never seen so clearly as he did to-day how absolutely his friend possessed those peculiar qualities the work demanded. He had never felt more sure of Karl's power; and power did not cover it—not quite.

"Something in your eye?" he asked when, just as Karl was about to leave, he seemed to be bothered with his eye, and was rubbing it a little.

"I don't know. It's felt off and on all day as though something was the matter with them both."

"Want me to take a look at them?"

"Oh no—no, it's nothing."

"By the way, you have a bad trick with your eyes. I've noticed it several times lately and intended to tell you about it. You have a way of rubbing them;—not rubbing them exactly, but pressing your finger in them. I'd quit that if I were you. If you must put your finger somewhere, put it on your nose. A man dealing with the stuff you do can't be too careful."

"Why, what do you mean?"

"Simply what I say. One drop of some of those things you have out there would be—a drop too much."

"Now, look here, you don't think I'm any such a bungler as that, do you?"

"Hum! You ought to know your medical history well enough to know that all the victims haven't been bunglers, by a long sight."

Karl's hand was on the knob. "Well, don't worry about me; I'm not built for a victim. I may be run over by an automobile—anybody is liable to be run over by yours, the way you run that thing—but I'm not liable to be killed by my own sword. That's not the way I work."

"Just the same, you'd better keep your hands out of your eyes!"

"All right," he agreed laughingly. "It does sound like a fool's trick. It's new to me;—didn't know that I did it."

When he was making some calls late that evening, Dr. Parkman passed the university and for some reason recalled what Karl had said that afternoon about his eyes bothering him. Why hadn't he examined them; or better still, one of the best oculists in the city was right there in the building—why hadn't he made Karl go in to see him? It was criminal for a man like that to neglect his eyes! He was near the Hubers now; he had an impulse to run over and make sure that everything was all right. He slowed up the machine and looked at his watch. No, it was almost eleven; he would not go now. After all he was silly to be attaching any weight to such a thing as a man's rubbing his eyes. He smiled a little as he thought of it that way. Karl wasn't bothering about it; so why should he?

But he had it on his mind, thinking of it frequently until he went to bed. And the thing which worried him most was that he was worrying a great deal more than the facts in the case warranted. He was not given to taking notions, and that was just what this seemed. One would suppose that a man like Hubers would be able to look out for himself,—"but for a fool, give me a great man!" was the thought with which the doctor went to sleep.



CHAPTER XIII

AN UNCROSSED BRIDGE

Karl awoke next morning with the sense of something wrong. Something was making him uncomfortable, but he was not wide enough awake at first to locate the trouble. He lay there dozing for a few minutes and when he roused again he knew that his eyes were hurting badly. He awakened instantly then. His eyes? Why, they had bothered him a little all day yesterday. Was there something the matter with them?

He got up, raised the shade and looked in the glass. They looked badly irritated, both of them. They felt wretchedly; he could scarcely keep looking into the glass. Then leaning over the dressing table, he looked more closely. He thought he saw something he did not like. He took a hand mirror and went to the window. He could see better now, and the better light verified the other one. It was true that in the corner of one eye there was a drop of pus. In the other there was a suggestion of the same thing.

He began to dress, proceeding slowly, his brows knitted, evidently thinking about something, and worried. Then he opened a drawer, took out a handkerchief, got the drop of pus from his eye and arranged the handkerchief for preserving it.

He would find out about that, and the sooner the better! He did not like it. He would see an oculist, too, this morning. It was plain he was going to have some trouble with his eyes.

Ernestine noticed them at once. What made them so red?—she wanted to know. Did they hurt? And wasn't there something he could put in them? He told her he was going to look after them at once. He could not afford to lose any time, and of course he could do nothing without his eyes.

Immediately after breakfast he started over to the laboratory.

It was Sunday morning and there would be no one there, which was so much the better. He wanted to get this straightened out.

He had his head down all the way over to the university, partly because his eyes bothered him and partly because he was thinking hard. The trouble had evidently been coming on yesterday. He stopped short. That trick Parkman told him about! But of course—moving on a little—that could not have anything to do with this. He had no recollection—he was very sure—then he walked faster, and the lines of his mouth told that he was troubled.

When he reached the laboratory he began immediately upon the microscopic examination. He hoped he could get at it through that, for the culture process meant a long wait. But after fifteen minutes of careful work the "smear" proved negative. There remained then only the longer route of the culture.

He did not begin upon that immediately. He sat there trying to think back to just what it was he had been doing Friday afternoon. The latter part of the afternoon he had been sitting here by this table. That was the time he was so buoyed up—getting so fine a light on the thing. It was the cancer problem then—but in the nature of things nothing could have happened with that. But there were always other things—all those things known to the pathological laboratory.

He turned around toward the culture oven, opened the outer door and through the inner door of glass looked in at the row of tubes. He was trying to recall what it was he had been working with the earlier part of Friday afternoon.

He knew now; one of the tubes had brought it to him. Yes, he knew now, and within him there was a pause, and a stillness. Right over there was where he sat preparing some cultures. There were two things with which he had been working;—again a pause, and a stillness. One of them could not make any serious difference; he went that far firmly, and then his heart seemed to stand quite still, waiting for his thought to go on. But he did not go on; there was a little convulsive clutching of his consciousness, and a return, with acclaim, to the fact that that could not make any serious difference. He clung there; he would not leave that; doggedly, defiantly, insistently, all-embracingly he affirmed that that could not make any serious difference. It was without opening his thought to anything further that he got out his things and began preparing the culture.

He was so accustomed to this that it went very mechanically and quickly. He took one of the test tubes arranged for the process in the culture oven and with the small wire instrument he had there, lifted the drop of pus on the handkerchief into the bullion of the tube. He did it all very carefully, very exactly, just as he always did. Then he put the tuft of cotton over the top and placed the tube in that strange-looking box commonly called a culture oven. In twenty-four hours he would know the truth. He adjusted the gas with a firm hand, arranging with his usual precision this thing which outwardly was like any of his experiments and which in reality—but he would not go into that.

Now for an oculist. His eyes were hurting badly; it was time to do whatever there was to be done. After all he was rather jumping at conclusions. There was a big chance that this was just something characteristic to eyes and had no relation to the things of his work. He seized upon that, ridiculing himself for having looked right over the most simple and natural explanation of all. Did not a great many people have trouble with their eyes?

That nerved him up all the way down town. He was almost ready to think it a great joke, the way he had hurried over to the laboratory and had gone at it in that life-and-death fashion.

He knew that the oculist in Dr. Parkman's building was a good one, and so he went there. It was a little disconcerting when he stepped into the elevator to meet Dr. Parkman himself. He had not thought of trying especially to avoid the doctor, but he had wanted to see the oculist first and get the thing straightened out. He was counting a great deal now on the oculist.

"Hello!" said the doctor, seeming startled at first, and then after one sharp glance: "Going up to see me?"

"Well, yes, after a little. Fact of the matter is I thought I'd run in and let this eye fellow take a look at me."

"Eyes bothering you?"

"Somewhat." He said it shortly, almost curtly.

When they reached the fifth floor, Dr. Parkman stepped out with him, although he himself belonged farther up.

"I know him pretty well," he explained, "I'll go with you."

He could not very well say: "I would rather you would not," although for some reason he felt that way.

It was soon clear to their initiated minds that the oculist did not know the exact nature of the trouble. He admitted that the case perplexed him. He, too, must make an examination of the pus. He treated Karl's eyes, and advised that they begin upon an immediate and aggressive course of treatment. Dr. Parkman, observing Karl's growing irritability, said that he would look after all that, see that the right thing was done.

As he walked out of that office Karl was a little dizzy. His avenue of hope had grown narrower. It was not, then, some affection characteristic of eyes. It was, after all, something from without. It was, in all probability, one of two things,—it was either—but again he did not go beyond the first, telling himself with nervous buoyancy that that would not make any serious difference.

They stepped into an elevator and went up. He knew Parkman would ask him questions now, but it seemed he could not get away from the doctor if he tried. He felt just at present as though he had not strength to resist any one. That oculist, he admitted to himself, had taken a good deal of starch out of him.

When they reached the office, Dr. Parkman offered him a drink; that irritated him considerably.

"Why no," he said, fretfully, "No—I don't want a drink. Why should I take a drink? Did you think I was all shot to pieces about something?"

The doctor was looking over his mail, fingering it a great deal, but not seeming to accomplish much of anything with it. At last he wheeled around toward him.

"What's the matter with your eyes?" he asked with disconcerting directness.

"How should I know?" retorted Karl, heatedly, almost angrily. "What do I know about it? If an oculist can't tell—you say he is a good one—why should you expect me to?" And then he added with a touch of eagerness, as if seizing upon a possibility: "I don't believe that fellow amounts to much. I think I'll go out now and hunt up somebody who knows something."

"The man's all right," said Dr. Parkman shortly. His own foot was tapping the floor nervously. "You ought to have some idea," he added, with what he felt to be brutal insistence, "as to whether or not you got anything in your eyes."

"Well, I haven't! I don't know anything about it."

But he was breathing hard. His whole manner told of fears and possibilities he was not willing to state. He would tell what he thought now in just a minute; the doctor knew that.

He began with insisting, elaborately, that he never got things on his hands—that was not his way; and even if he did get something on his hands, he wouldn't get it in his eyes; even if he did rub his eyes sometimes—he didn't admit it—but even if he did, would he be such a fool as to rub them when he had something on his hands? But if, in spite of all those impossibilities, just admitting for the sake of argument, and because Parkman insisted on being ominous, that it was something like that, there were two things it might be. It might be—he named the first with emphasis, and Dr. Parkman, after a minute's thought, heaved a big sigh of unmistakable relief.

"Now you see that couldn't make any vital difference," Karl added, with a debonair manner, a thin veneer of aggressiveness.

The doctor was leaning forward in his chair. He was beginning to grow fearful of the emphasis put upon this thing which could make no vital difference.

Karl stopped as though he had reached the end of his story. But the silence was wearing on him. His eyes had a hunted look.

"Why, you can see for yourself," he said—and this was the note of appeal—"that that could not make any vital difference."

Dr. Parkman was looking at him narrowly. His own breath was coming hard. He saw at last that he would have to ask.

"The—other?" he said, succeeding fairly well in gaining a tone of indifference.

"Heavens—how you fellows nag for details! How you drag at a man! Well, the other—if you're so anxious to know"—the doctor's heart sank before the defiance of that—"the other is"—he looked all about him as one hunted, desperate, and then snapped it out and turned away, and instantly the room grew frightfully still.

It struck Dr. Parkman like a blow from which one must have time to recover. Steeled though he was to the hearing of tragic facts, he was helpless for the minute before this. And then, refusing to let it close in upon him, it was he who turned recklessly assertive, defiantly insistent.

"Any fool would know it's not that," he said, his gruff voice touched with bravado.

There was one of those strange changes then. Karl turned and faced him.

"How do you know?" he asked, with a calm not to be thrust aside. "How do you know it's not that? You can't be sure," he pursued, and there was fairly cunning in forcing his friend upon it, cutting off all escape, "but there are just fifty chances out of a hundred that it is that. And if it is," with a cold, impersonal sort of smile—"would you give very much for my chances of sight?"

"You're talking like a fool!"—but beads of perspiration were on the doctor's forehead. And then, the professional man getting himself in hand: "You're overworked, Karl. You're nervous. Why I can fix this up for you. I'll just—" but before that steady, understanding gaze he could not go on.

"Not on me, Parkman—," slowly and very quietly—"not on me. I know the ropes. Don't try those little tricks on me. I don't need professional coddling, and I don't need professional lies. You see I happen to know just a little about the action of germs. We'll do the usual things, of course—that's mere scientific decency, but if this thing has really gotten in its work—oh I've studied these things a little too long, old man, I've watched them too many times, to be able to fool myself now."

"Well you will at least admit," said Parkman—brusque because he was afraid to let himself be anything else—"that there are fifty chances out of a hundred in your favour?"

Karl nodded; he had leaned back in his chair; he seemed terribly tired.

"Come now, old chap—it isn't like you to surrender before the battle. We'll prepare to meet the foe—though I give you my word of honour I don't expect the enemy to show up. This isn't in the cards. I know it."

Karl roused a little. There was a bracing note in that vehemence. "Well, don't ask me to do any crossing of a bridge before I come to it. I think our friend down stairs is thinking of hospitals and nurses and all kinds of quirks that would drive me crazy. Tell him I know what I'm about. Tell him to let me alone!"

"All right," laughed the doctor, knowing Karl too well to press the matter further just then, "though, of course, common-sense demands quiet and a dark room."

"Ernestine will darken our rooms at home," said Karl stubbornly.

It was strange how quickly they could turn to the refuge of everyday phrases, could hide their innermost selves within their average selves as the only shelter which opened to them. There was something Dr. Parkman wanted to do for him, and they went into the treatment room. In there they spoke about meeting for dinner,—Ernestine had asked the doctor to come out. Georgia and her mother were coming too, Karl told him, and the interview closed with some light word about not being late for dinner.



CHAPTER XIV

"TO THE GREAT UNWHIMPERING!"

"Tell me some good stories about doctors," said Georgia; "I want to use them in something I'm going to write."

"Isn't it dreadful?" said Mrs. McCormick, turning to Dr. Parkman, "she even interviews people while they eat!" Mrs. McCormick had that manner of some mothers of seeming to be constantly disapproving, while not in the least concealing her unqualified admiration.

"I'm not interviewing them, Mother. Skillful interviewers never interview. They just get people to talk."

"But what is it you're going to write," asked the doctor, "a eulogy or denunciation?"

"Both; something characteristic."

"Meaning that something characteristic about doctors would include both good and bad?"

"Well, they're pretty human, aren't they?" laughed Georgia.

"And think how grateful we should be," ventured Karl, "for the inference of something good."

Dr. Parkman looked over at him with a hearty: "That's right," relieved that his friend could enter into things at all.

In the library before they came in, things had gone badly. Mrs. McCormick held persistently to the topic of Karl's eyes, putting forth all sorts of "home remedies" which would cure them in a night. He had grown nervous and irritable under it, and Mrs. Hubers several times had come to the rescue with her graciousness. She was worried herself; the doctor could see that in the way she looked from her husband to him, scenting something not on the surface. He was just beginning to fear the dinner was going to be miserable for them all, when Miss McCormick broke the tension by asking for stories.

"Tell us what you're going to write, Georgia," said Ernestine, she too seizing at it gratefully, "and then our doctors will have a better idea of what you want."

"Well, I was talking to Judge Lee the other day, and he told me some good stories about lawyers—characteristic stories, you know. So I thought I would work up a little series—lawyers, doctors, ministers and so on, and see how nearly I could reach the characteristics of the professions through the stories I tell of them; not much of an idea, perhaps—but I know a man who will buy the stuff."

Ernestine was smiling in a knowing little way. "Do you want to begin with something really characteristic?" she asked.

"That's it. Something to strike the nail on the head, first blow."

"Then lead off with the story of Pasteur's forgetting to go to his own wedding. There's the most characteristic doctor story I know of."

"That's a direct insult," laughed Karl.

"Why, not at all, Karl," protested Mrs. McCormick, "every one knows you were on hand for your wedding."

"Yes, and a good thing he was," declared Ernestine. "I don't think I should have been as meek and gentle about it as the bride of Pasteur. I fancy I would have said: 'Oh, really now—if it's so much trouble, we'll just let it go.'"

"No, Ernestine," said Mrs. McCormick, seriously, after the laugh, "I don't believe you would have said that,"—and then they laughed again.

"Well, it's a good story," she insisted; "and characteristic. I believe after all that Pasteur was a chemist and not a doctor, but the doctors have appropriated him, so the story will be all right."

"If you want to tell some stories about Pasteur," said Karl, "tell about his refusing the royal decoration. He told the Emperor that the honour and pleasure of doing such work as his was its own reward, and that no decoration was needed. That story made a great hit in the scientific world."

"But is it characteristic?" asked Georgia, slyly.

"Well," he laughed, "it ought to be."

"Another one of the independent kind," said Parkman, "is on Bilroth. He was summoned to appear at a certain hour before the Emperor of Austria. Bilroth was with a very sick patient until the eleventh hour and arrived a little late in business clothes. The scandalised chamberlain protested, telling him he could not go in like that. Whereupon Bilroth blustered out: 'I have no time to spare. Tell His Majesty if he wishes to see me, I am here. If he wants my dress suit, I will have a boy bring it around.'"

"Did he get in?" asked Mrs. McCormick, anxiously.

"I think he did, although undoubtedly Miss McCormick will be too modern to say so."

"There was a story I always liked about a Vienna doctor," he continued; he was anxious to guide the stories, for Karl had seemed suddenly to sink within himself. He understood why—he might have foreseen where this would lead. For there were other stories of medical men, stories which fitted a little too closely just now; he was especially sorry he had mentioned Bilroth. "This shows another side of the doctor," he went on, after a minute, "and as you are going to give good as well as bad, this may help out on the good side—there's where you will be short. A woman came to see this doctor regarding her consumptive son. He told her there was nothing he could do for him, adding: 'If you want him to live, you must take him to Italy.' The woman broke down and told him she could not do that, that she had no money. The doctor sat there thinking a moment, and then sent over to the bank and got her a letter of credit covering the amount involved. Another doctor, who happened to be near, asked why he did that. 'You can't possibly support all your needy patients,' he said; 'why did you choose this particular case? Of course,' he added, 'it was very good of you.' 'No,' said the doctor, 'it was not good of me. There was nothing good about it. But I was guilty of proposing to her something I knew she could not do. After opening up that possibility it was my obligation to see that she could fulfill it. I suggested what I knew to be the impossible; after I suggested it, it was my business to make it possible.' Don't you think that a pretty good sense of justice?" he asked of Ernestine.

"What might be called an inner squareness," said Georgia, as Ernestine responded only with the fine lights the story had brought to her eyes.

Karl did not seem to have heard the story. Ernestine looked toward him anxiously.

"Now I'm going to tell a story," she said, with a gaiety thrown out for rousing him, "a very fine story;—every one must listen." He looked over at her and smiled at that, listening for her story.

"This man's name can't be printed, because he lives in Chicago and it might embarrass him,"—Karl and Dr. Parkman exchanged glances with a smile. "This is a characteristic story, as it shows a doctor's tyranny. There was a boy taken ill at a little town near Chicago. The country doctor telephoned up to the boy's father, and the father telephoned the family physician who, from the meagre facts, scented appendicitis. I don't know how he knew it was bad, but I believe a good doctor is a pretty good guesser. At any rate he suspected this was serious, and told the father they would have to go down there at once. The father said there was no Sunday train. 'Then get a special,' said the doctor. 'We'll probably have to bring him up to the hospital to operate, and can't do it in the automobile.' The father protested against the special, saying it would be very expensive and that he did not think it necessary. The doctor said he did think it necessary or he would not have suggested it. The father demurred still more and the doctor rang off. Then you called up the railroad office, yourself—wasn't that it?" turning to Dr. Parkman, who grew red and looked genuinely embarrassed. "Oh dear,"—in mock dismay—"now I've mixed it up, haven't I? Well, this doctor—I'm not saying anything about who he is—called up the railroad office and calmly ordered the special. I must not forget to say that the man who did not want to spend the money had an abundance of money to spend. Then he called the boy's father and said, 'Be at the station in twenty minutes. The special will be waiting. You will have nothing to do but sign the check.'"

"Well," said Mrs. McCormick, when Ernestine stopped as though through, "would the father pay for it, and did the boy have to have an operation, and did he get well?"

"Mother doesn't like this new way of telling a story," said Georgia; "she likes to hear the got-married-and-lived-happily-ever-after part."

"I'm sure no one said anything about getting married in this," said Mrs. McCormick, serenely.

"But don't you think that a fine doctor story?" Ernestine asked smilingly of Dr. Parkman.

"A very bad story to tell. Miss McCormick's general reader will say—: 'Oh yes, of course, he was just bound to have an operation.'"

"Georgia,"—this was from the man at the head of the table, and there was something in his voice to arrest them all—"if you are in earnest about wanting stories of doctors, why don't you tell some of the big ones? Some of the stories medical men have a right to be proud of?"

"What are they?" she asked, promptly. "Tell me some of them."

Dr. Parkman's eyes were on his plate. He was handling his fork a little nervously.

"If I were going to tell any stories about medical men," Karl went on, and in his quiet voice there was still that compelling note, "it seems to me I should want to say something about the doctors who died game—just a little something about the men who took their medicine and said nothing; men with the nerve to face even their own understanding—cut off, you see, from the refuge of fooling themselves. Ask Dr. Parkman about the surgeons who lost their hands or their lives through infection. Those are the stories he knows that are worth while. He's only giving you the surface of it, Georgia. Tell him you'd like a little of the real thing. Ask him about the men who died slow deaths, looking a fatal future in the face from a long way off. He mentioned Bilroth just now, telling a funny story about him. There's a better story than that to tell about Bilroth. You know he was the man who knew so much about the heart; he probably understood the heart better than any other man. And by one of those leering tricks of fate, he had heart disease himself. He watched his own case and made notes on it, that his profession might profit by his destruction. There you have something worth writing about! In his last letter home, he said he had ten days to live—and he missed it by just one; he lived eleven. If you're going to tell any stories about Bilroth, tell that one, Georgia. And then a story or two showing that while many men take chances, it's the doctor who takes them most understandingly. Why medical science is full of an almost grotesque courage! Don't you begin to see how the doctor's been trifling with you, Georgia?"

He paused, but no one felt the impulse to speak. His eyes were hidden by the dark glasses he was wearing because of that cold, or whatever it was, in his eyes, but his face told the story of an alert mind, a heart responsive to the things of which he spoke. Then he went on and talked a little, quietly enough, but with a passionateness, a high note of understanding, of the men who had had the nerve—eyes open—to face the things fate handed them. It was as if he were looking back over the whole sweep of the world and picking from many times and many places the men whose souls had not flinched to the death. And at the last he said, smiling—the kind of smile one meets with a tear—"Let's have a little toast." He raised his glass of claret and for a minute looked at it in silence. And then he said slowly, his very quiet voice and that little smile tempering the words:

"Here's to all those fellows who went down without the banners or the trumpets!—To the boys who took the starch out of their own tragedies!—To those first class sports who made no fuss about their own funerals! Here's to the Great Unwhimpering!"

Dr. Parkman choked a little over his wine, the tightening in Ernestine's throat made it hard for her with hers, Georgia's cheeks were burning with enthusiasm for the story she saw now she could write, and even Mrs. McCormick had no questions as to just what men had died that way. Then it was Karl himself who abruptly turned the conversation to the more shallow channels of dinner talk.

After that he was not unlike a man who had had a little too much champagne. He startled them with the nimbleness of his wit, the light play of his fancy. It was as though he had a new vocabulary, a lighter one than was commonly his. There was a sort of delicate frolicsomeness in his thought.

For a reason unknown to her, it troubled Ernestine. She looked from Karl to Dr. Parkman, but the doctor had that impenetrable look of his. What was the matter with him? He had talked so freely during the early part of the dinner, and now he seemed to have dropped out of it entirely. She caught him looking at Karl once; the keen, narrow gaze of physician to patient. Then she saw, distinctly, that his face darkened, and after that, when he smiled at the things which were being tossed back and forth between Karl and Georgia, it was what she called to herself a "made-up smile"; and once or twice when Karl said something especially funny, she was quite sure she saw Dr. Parkman wince.

A lump rose in Ernestine's throat; Karl seemed to have slipped away from her. This was a mood to which she could not respond and it seemed he did not expect her to. Almost all of his talk was directed to Georgia, who, with her quick wit and inherent high spirits, was enjoying the pace he set her. It seemed to resolve itself into a duel of quick, easy play of thought and words between those two. But the things they said did not make Ernestine laugh. She smiled, as Dr. Parkman did, a "made-up" smile.

She had always enjoyed Karl's humour immensely, but now, though she had never seen him as brilliant, something about him pulled at her heart. She could not restrain a resentfulness at Georgia for encouraging him. For she could not get away from the feeling that all of this was not grounded on the thing which was Karl himself. It was like nothing in the world so much as the breeziness of a mind which had let itself go. She was glad when at last she could rise from the table.

In the library it was as though he were holding on to Georgia, determined not to let her out of the mood into which he had brought her. The things of which he talked were things having no bearing whatever upon himself. If she had not been there, had simply heard of the things said, she would not have recognised Karl at all. For the first time since they had known one another, Ernestine felt left out,—alone.

Mrs. McCormick said that they must go, but Karl protested. "We're having such a good time," he said, "don't think of going."

But Georgia had an engagement. She insisted at last that they must go. Dr. Parkman had remained too, although Ernestine was satisfied he was not enjoying things.

"Why, what in the world have you done to Karl?" laughed Georgia, pinning on her hat. "I haven't had such good fun for months. I had no idea he was such a gem of a dinner man."

"I do not think Karl is very well," said Ernestine, a little coolly.

"Well? Why, bless you, I never saw him in such exuberant mood."

"Didn't they make the words fly?" laughed Mrs. McCormick. "My dear, you and the doctor and I were quite left behind."

"It seemed that way," said Ernestine, trying to keep her chin from quivering.

When she returned to the library, Dr. Parkman and Karl were evidently just closing a discussion for Karl was saying, heatedly: "Now just let me manage things in my own way!"

The doctor seemed reluctant to leave. Ernestine was alone with him for a minute in the hall, and she was sure he started to say something once and then changed it to something else. But when he did leave, it was with merely the conventional goodbye.

She walked slowly back to the library. Karl was sitting in the Morris chair, his elbow upon one arm of it, his hand to his forehead. His whole bearing had changed; it was as though he had let down. Again it seemed as though in the last hour he had been intoxicated, and this the depression to follow that kind of exuberance. But he looked up as he heard her, and smiled a little, a wan, tired smile. She was beside him in an instant.

"You seemed so happy this afternoon, dear," she said, stroking his hair, "and now you seem so tired. Aren't you well, Karl?" she asked, a little timidly.

His face then mirrored a dissatisfaction, a sort of resentment.

"I talked like a fool this afternoon!" he said gruffly.

"Why, no, dear, only—not quite like yourself."

"Well, the fact of the matter is"—this after a minute's thought—"I have a frightful headache. I suppose it comes from this trouble with my eyes. I thought I wasn't going to be able to keep up, and in my efforts to do it, I"—he paused and then laughed rather harshly—"overdid it."

He seemed anxious for her reply to that.

"I knew it was something like that," she said simply. Then, after a minute: "Is there anything I can do for the head?"

He told her no, but that he believed he would turn the chair around with his back to the light.

"And I won't talk, dear," he said gently; "I'll just rest a little."

She helped him with the chair and for a minute sat there on a low seat beside him.

"You know, sweetheart," resting her cheek upon his hand, "I don't like those dark glasses at all. I'll be so glad when you don't have to wear them."

"Why?" he asked, his voice a little muffled.

"Because they shut me out. I always seem closer to you when I can look into your eyes.—Oh—does it pain so?" as he drew sharply away.

"That did hurt," he admitted, his voice low. "I—I'd better not talk for a little, dear."

So she said if there was nothing she could do for his head, she would leave him while she wrote a couple of letters.

For a long time he sat there without moving. It was the exhaustion which follows intoxication, for he had indeed intoxicated himself that afternoon, and with an idea. It had come about so strangely. After they sat down to dinner, he had been on the point a half a dozen times, of excusing himself on the plea of a bad headache. Then when they began to talk about doctors, those other things had come to him, and it was as though the spirit of all those men who had gone down that way entered into him, came so close, possessed him so completely, that he could not hold back those words about them. A spirit quite beyond his control had moved him to that little toast. After that, something—perhaps a spark from the nerve of those men of whom he had spoken—brought his mind firmly into possession of the feeling that everything was all right. It was not that he argued himself out of his fears, but rather that something brought the assurance of its being all right, and after that there came a number of arguments sustaining the conviction. Just before dinner he had gone over to the laboratory and looked at the culture. It had not shown anything at all. At the time he accepted that as a matter of course—it was not time for it to show anything. But looking back on it after this conviction came to him, he took the very fact of its not showing anything as proof that there was nothing there to show. His mind only grasped one side of it—that it showed nothing at all. Brightening under that he began to talk lightly, to joke with Georgia, and talking that way seemed to enable him to keep hold of the conviction that everything was all right. The more he talked, the more sure he was of it, the gayer he felt, the more disposed to let his mind run wild. He was a little afraid if he stopped talking, this beautiful conviction of its being all right would leave him. So he made Georgia keep at it, Georgia was the one could play that sort of game.

As he talked, new arguments came to him. The oculist! At first he had thought it a bad thing that the oculist could not tell what was the matter. Now he seized upon that as proving there was nothing the matter at all. And Dr. Parkman had said, at the last, that it did not amount to anything. At the time that had been a mere conventional phrase, but now, in his exhilaration, he seized upon it as indisputable truth. But always there was the feeling that he must keep on feeling this way, or the conviction, and all that it meant, would go. That was why he clung to Georgia. Finally he reached the point where he could distinctly remember getting the other stuff—the stuff which did not make any difference—on his hands. He could fairly see it on his hands, could remember distinctly getting it in his eye. And then Georgia had said something about going, and he had begged her not to go. But she insisted, and he began to feel then that the exhilaration was wearing off, that he was coming back to face things; to the doubt, the uncertainty, the suffering. And now that he had come back to things as they were, he felt inexpressibly tired.

He went over it again and again, trying to gain something now, not from any form of excitement, but from things as they were. Suddenly his face brightened. He sat there in deep thought, and then at last he smiled a little. Whatever happened must have occurred Friday afternoon. But he had never in all his life felt as happy about his work as he did before he left the laboratory Friday afternoon. Could a man feel like that, would it be in the heart of things to let a man feel that way, if he had already entered upon the road of his destruction? It had been more than a happiness of the mind; it was a happiness of the soul, and would not a man's soul send out some note of warning? And then that same evening when he and Ernestine sat before the fire! If already this grim fate had entered into their lives, would not their love, would not her love, all intuition, deep-seeing, feeling that which it could not understand, have felt in that moment of supreme happiness, some token of what was ahead? It could not be that the world jeered at men like that. Their love would have told them something was wrong.

Ernestine came in just then and he called her to him.

"Liebchen," he said, "I've been thinking about that evening of your birthday, about how beautiful it was. Weren't you happy, dear, as we sat there before the fire?"

"So happy, Karl," she murmured, warmly glad to have her own Karl again. "Everything seemed so beautiful; everything seemed so perfectly right."

He drew her to him with a passion she did not understand. His Ernestine! His wife! She who communed with love, whose harmony with the great soul of things was perfect—they could not have deceived her like that! Ernestine and love dwelt too closely together. She would have received some sign.

For a time that calmed and sustained him; he believed in it; it was his weapon to use against the doubts and terrors which preyed upon him. But the gloom of his soul seemed to thicken with the deepening of the night. His heart grew cold with the coming of the shadows. The passing of day inspired in him fears not to be reasoned away.

He grew very nervous during the evening and finally said he must go over to the laboratory and arrange some things for morning. Ernestine protested against it—and if he must go would he not let her go with him? But he told her he believed it would be better for his head if he walked alone for just a little while. He did not have a headache more than once in five years, he assured her, laughing a little, and when he did, it was apt to upset him.

When he came back at last—it seemed to her a very long time—she saw, watching from the window, that he was walking very slowly, almost as if exhausted She could not hold back her alarm at his white, worn face. Something in it gripped at her heart.

"Is it worse, dear?" she asked anxiously.

"It's a little bad—just now. I'll go to bed. It will be better then." He spoke slowly, as though very tired.

"Won't you take something for it, Karl?" she persisted. "Won't you?"

"I do not know of anything to take that would do any good, Ernestine,"—and he could not quite keep the quiver out of those words.

"But other people take things. There are things. Let me go out and get you something."

He shook his head.

"Doctors don't take much stock in medicine," he said, with a touch of his usual humour.

She wanted to stay with him until he went to sleep. She wanted to put cold cloths on his head. It was hard to avoid Ernestine's tenderness.

"It did not show anything," he assured himself, pleadingly, when alone. "It only showed that it was going to show in the morning. I knew that. I knew all the time I was going to know in the morning. I'll not go to pieces. I'll not be a fool about it," he kept repeating.

But a little later Ernestine was sure she heard him groan. She could not keep away from that.

"Oh, sweetheart," she murmured, kneeling by his bed, "I can't bear it not to help you. Let me do just some little thing," she pleaded.

He put his hand over in hers. "Hold it, dear; if you aren't too tired. I don't want to talk,—but hold on to my hand."

His grip grew very tight after a minute. She was sure his head must be paining terribly. If only he would take something for it!

In a little while he grew very quiet. Soon she was sure that he was asleep. But after she had at last stolen away he turned and buried his face in his arms.



CHAPTER XV

THE VERDICT

It was Monday morning now. The hours of that night had been hours of torture. Sleep had come once or twice, but sleep meant only the surrender of his mind to the horrors which preyed upon it. He could, in some measure, exert a mastery when awake, but no man is master of his dreams. His dreams put before him all those things his thoughts fought away. In his dreams, there was a fearful thing pursuing him, reaching out for him, gaining upon him with each step. Or sometimes, it stalked beside him, not retreating, not advancing, but waiting, standing there beside him with grim, inexorable smile. It was after waking from such dreams that he breathed his prayer that this night pass. No matter what be ahead, he asked that this night pass away.

After he was up he found himself able to go on in much the usual way. When Ernestine came in and asked about his head, he told her it was better; when she wanted to know about his eyes, he said they were not any better yet, but that that was something which would simply have to run its course. She begged him not to go over to the university, but he told her it was especially important to go this morning. He added that he might not be there very long.

He ate his usual breakfast. A truth that would shake the foundations of his life might be waiting for him just ahead, and yet he could make his usual laughing plea for a second cup of coffee. Undoubtedly it was so with many men; beneath a mail of conventions and pleasantries they lived through their fears and sorrows alone.

Something clutched at his heart as he kissed Ernestine good-bye and there was a momentary temptation. Could he face it alone, if he had to face it? To have her with him! But he put that aside; not alone for her sake, but because he felt that after all there were things through which one must pass alone. But after he had reached the door, he came back and kissed her again. What if he were to go down into a place too deep for his voice to reach her?

There was some solace, assurance, in the naturalness of things about him. Everything else was just the same; it did not seem that it could be part of natural law then for his own life to be entirely overturned.

And the world was so beautiful! It was a buoyant spring morning. There was assurance in the song of the birds, in the perfume of flowers and trees. The air upon his face was soft and reassuring. This seemed far away from the hideous phantoms of the night. Why the world did not feel like tragedy this morning!

He had a lecture at eight o'clock, and he made up his mind he would give it. In the night he had thought of going first of all to the laboratory. The truth would be waiting for him there. But it was his business to give the lecture and he could not be sure of giving it if he went to the laboratory first. A man had no right to let his own affairs interfere with his work. Oh yes—by all means, he would give the lecture. In spite of his prayer that the uncertainty should end, he reached out for another hour of holding it off.

He knew as the hour advanced that he had never done better work in the lecture room. He pinned his mind to it with a rigidity which prompted him to put the subject as though it were the most vital thing in all the world. He threw the whole force of his will to filling his mind with the things of which he spoke that he might not yield so much as an inch to the things which waited just outside.

He talked until the last minute; in fact, he went so much over his time that another class was waiting at the door. He clung to those last moments with the desperation of the drowning man to the splintered piece of board. After it was over, just as he was yielding the desk to the man who followed him, one of his students approached him with a question and the thankfulness, the appeal, almost, in the smile with which he received him, mystified the student until he stammered out his question bewilderedly.

He could wait no longer now. That room belonged to others. The next period was his usual hour in the laboratory. It was an hour which on Monday morning he could, if he wished, spend alone.

His temples were beating, thundering. His hands were so cold that they seemed things apart from him. But his mouth—how parched it was!—was set very hard, and his steps, though slow, was firm.

In the outer laboratory, Professor Hastings stopped him, remonstrating against his working when he was having trouble with his eyes. He assured him, elaborately, that he was taking care of them, that probably he would not be in there long.

He opened the door of his laboratory and passed in. He closed it behind him, and stood there leaning against it. He was all alone now. There was nothing in the room but himself and the truth which was waiting for him.

He put his book down upon the table. He walked over and sat down before the culture oven. He must get this over with! He was getting sick. He could not stand much more.

With firm, quick hand he wrenched open the doors. He put his hand upon what he knew to be the tube. He pulled it out, turned around to the light and held it up between him and the window. For one moment he looked away;—how parched his mouth was! And then, a mighty will turning his eyes upon it, in one long gaze he read the plain, unmistakable, unalterable truth. He had never seen a better culture. Science would perhaps commit itself no further than to say his eyes had become inoculated with the most virulent germ known to pathology. But out beyond the efforts which would be made to save him, he read—written large—the truth.

He was going blind.



CHAPTER XVI

"GOOD LUCK, BEASON!"

Minutes passed and nothing happened. There was no sound of splintering glass. The tube did not fall from his hands. Not so much as gasp or groan broke the stillness of the laboratory. He did not seem to have moved even the muscle of a finger.

He faced it. He understood it. He faced it and understood it as he had no other truth in all his life. No merciful, mitigating force caused his mind to totter. With fairly cosmic regularity, cosmic inevitability, comprehension struck blow after blow.

He was going blind. He had spent his life studying the action of such forces as this. He knew them! A man who knew less would have hoped more. Some idle dreamer might attempt to push one star closer to another. An astronomer would not do that.

He was going blind. He could no more do his work without his eyes than the daylight could come without the sun. Fate jeered at him: "Your eyes are gone, but your life will remain." It was like saying to the sun: "You are not to give any more light, but you are to go on shining just the same."

He was going blind. The world which had just opened to him—the world of sunsets and forests and mountains and seas gulped to black nothingness!

Blind! Swept under by a trick he would not have believed possible from his most careless student! Mastered by the things he had believed he controlled! Meeting his life's destruction from the things which were to bring his life's triumph! In that moment of understanding's throwing wide her gates to torture, fate stood out as the master dramatist. Making him do it himself! Working it out of a mere fool's trick!

Blind?—Blind? But his eyes fitted his brain so perfectly it was through them all knowledge came to him. They were the world's great channel to his mind. It was through his eyes he knew his fellow beings. The lifting of an eyebrow, a queer twist to a smile—those things always told him more than words. And—but here he staggered. The mind could get this, as it had all else, but on this the heart broke. Ernestine!—that smile—the love lights in her eyes—the glints of her dear, dear hair—The tube fell from his hand. His head sank to the table. He was buried now under an agony beyond all power to lift.

Whether it was minutes or hours which passed then, he never knew in the days which followed. Time is not measured by common reckoning on the hill of Calvary.

The thing which brought him from under the blow at last was a blinding rage. He wanted to take a revolver and blow his brains out, then and there. He—a man supposed to have a mind! He—counted a master of those very things! And now, what? Manhood, power, himself gone. Stumbling through his days! Useless!—a curse to himself and everyone else. Groping about in the dark—a thing to be pitied and treated well for pity's sake! Cared for—looked after—helped! That beat down the bounds of control. He did things then which he never remembered and would not have believed.

It all rushed upon him—the birthday night—the crafty, insidious mockery through every bit of it, until everything to which he had held tottered about him, and goaded beyond all power to bear there came a slow, comprehending, soul-deep curse on the world and all that the world had done. And then, out of the darkness, through the blackened, dizzying, tottering mass—a voice, a face, a smile, a touch, a kiss, and the curses gave way to a sob and things steadied a little. No, not the world and everything it had done, for it was a world which held Ernestine, a world which had given Ernestine to him for his.

He fought for it then: for his faith in the world, his belief in the things of love. It was the fight of his life, the fight for his own soul. Come what might in the future, it was this hour which held the decisive battle. For if he could not master those things which were surging upon him, then the things which made him himself were gone for all time. And when sense of the underlying cunning of the blow brought the surrendering laugh close to his parched lips it was held back, held under, by that ever recurring memory of a touch, a voice, a face. It was Ernestine, their love, fighting against the powers of damnation for the rescue of his soul.

Even in the battle's heat, he had full grasp of the battle's significance, knew that all the future hung upon making it right this hour with his own soul. His face grew grey and old, he concentrated days of force into minutes, but little by little, through a strength greater than that strength with which men conquer worlds, a force greater than the force with which the mind's big battles are won, by a force not given many since the first of time, he held away, beat back, the black tides ready to carry him over into that sea of bitterness from which lost souls send out their curses and their jeers and their unmeetable silences.

He tried to see a way. He tried to reach out to something which should help him. Standing there amid the wreck of his life, he tried to think, even while the ruins were still falling about him, of some plan of reconstruction. It was like rebuilding a great city destroyed by fire; the brave heart begins before the smoke has cleared away. But that task is a simple one. The city destroyed by fire may be rebuilded as before. But with him the master builder was gone. Out of those poor, scarred, ungeneraled forces which remained, could he hope to bring anything to which the world would care to give place?

He could see no way yet. All was chaos. And just then there came a knock at the door.

He paid no heed at first. What right had the world to come knocking at his door? What could he do for any one now?

The knock was repeated. But he would not go. If it were some student, what could he do for him? He could only say: "I can do nothing for you. Go to some one else." And should it be one of his fellow professors, come to counsel with him, he could only say to him: "I have dropped out. Go on without me. I wish you good luck."

That message he had thought to give!—and now—

Again the knock, timidly this time, fearing a too great persistency, but reluctant to go away. He would go in just a minute now. There would not come another knock. Well, let him go. When all the powers of fate had gathered round to mock and jeer was it too much to ask that there be no other spectators? Was not a man entitled to one hour alone among the ruins of his life?

He who would gain entrance was starting, very slowly, to walk away. He listened to him take a few steps, and then suddenly rose and hurried to the door. He was not used to turning away his students unanswered.

It was Beason who turned eagerly around at sound of the opening door. Beason—of all people—that boy who never in the world would understand!

He was accustomed to reading faces quickly and even through his dark glasses his worried eyes read that Beason was in trouble, moved by something from the path in which he was wont to go.

"I'm sorry to interrupt you," stammered the boy, as he motioned him to a chair.

"Oh—that's all right; I wasn't doing anything, very important. Just—finishing up something," he added, glad, when he heard his own voice, that it was only Beason.

"I'm in trouble," blurted out Beason, "and I—I wanted to see you."

The man was sitting close to a table, and he rested his elbow upon it, and shaded his eyes with his hand.

"Trouble?" his voice was kind, though a little unsteady. "Why, what's the trouble?"

"I've got to stop school! I've got to give up my work for a whole year!"

The hand still shaded his darkened eyes. His mouth was twitching a little.

"A year, Beason?" he said—any one else would have been struck with the note in it—"You say—a year?"

"Yes," said Beason, "a whole year. My father has had some hard luck and can't keep me here. I'd try to get work in Chicago, and stay on, but I not only have to make my own way, but I must help my mother and sister. Next year another deal my father's in will probably straighten things out, and then I suppose I can come back."

The man very slowly nodded his head. "I see," he said, his voice coming from 'way off somewhere, "I see."

"It's tough!" exclaimed Beason bitterly—"pretty tough!"

Dr. Hubers had turned his chair away from Beason, and with closed eyes was facing the light from without. There was a long pause. Beason waited patiently, supposing the man to be thinking what to say about so great a difficulty.

"As I understand it," he said, turning around at last, "it's like this. You are to give up your work at the university for a year—just one short little year—and do something else; something not so much in your line, perhaps, but something which will be helping those you care for—making it easier for some one else. It's to be your privilege, as I understand it, to fill a man's place. That's about it, isn't it?"

"But that's not the point! I thought,"—in an injured, almost tearful voice—"that you would understand."

"Oh, I do. I see the other point. You hate to stop work for,"—he cleared his throat—"for a year."

"A year," said Beason dismally, "is such a long time to lose."

The man had nothing to say to that. His head sank a little. He seemed to be thinking.

Finally he came out of his reverie; seemed to come from a long way off. "And where are you going, my boy?" he asked kindly. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going clear out West," said Beason gloomily. "Father has something for me with a company in the Northwest."

"Out there!"—an eager voice rang out, a voice which rested on a smothered sob. "Great heavens, man, you're going out there? Out there to the mountains and the forests? Out there where you can see the sun come up and go down, can see—can see—" but his voice trailed off to a strange silence.

"I never cared much for scenery," said Beason bluntly, "and I care a lot for—all this I'm leaving."

"We don't really leave a thing," said the man—his voice was low and tired—"when we're coming back to it. The only real leave-takings are the final ones."

Beason shifted in his chair. Some of these things were not just what he had expected.

"Beason,"—something in his voice now made the boy move a little nearer—"I'm sorry for your disappointment, but I wish I could make you see how much you have to live for. Get in the habit of looking at the sunsets, Beason. Take a good many long looks at the mountains and the rivers. It's not unscientific. You know,"—with a little whimsical toss of his head—"we only have so many looks to take in this world, and when we're about through we'd hate to think they'd all been into microscopes and culture ovens. And don't worry too much, Beason, about things running into your plans and knocking them over. You know what that wise old Omar had to say about it all." He paused, and then quoted, very slowly, each word seeming to stand for many things:

And fear not lest Existence closing your Account, and mine, shall know the like no more; The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.

"And—will—pour,"—he repeated the three words. And then his head drooped, his hands fell laxly at his sides. It seemed it was not of Beason he had been thinking as he looked Fate in the face with that taunt of the old Persian poet.

But he looked at him after a moment, came back to him. He saw that the boy was disappointed. The gloom with which he had come had not lifted from his face. That would not do. He was not going to fail his student like that.

"Why, look here, Beason," he said in a new tone, all enthusiasm now, "maybe you'll shoot a bear. I have a presentiment, Beason, that you will, and when you're eighty-five and have your great grandchild on your knee, you'll think a great deal more about that bear than you will about the year you missed here at school. Now brace up! Hard knocks wake a fellow up. You'll come back here and do better work for your year of roughing it—take my word for it, you will."

Beason had brightened. "And you think,"—he grew a little red—"that when I come back I can have my old place here with you?"

The man drew in his breath, drew it in rather hard; something had taken the enthusiasm away.

"I'll do my little part, Beason," he said, exceedingly quietly, "to see that you are not overlooked when you come back."

The boy rose to go. "I do feel better," he said clumsily, but with heartiness.

He looked around the room. "I hate to leave it. I've had some good times here, and I'm—fond of it." The man was leaning against the wall. He did not say anything at all.

Then Beason held out his hand. "Good-bye," he said, "and—thank you."

For a minute there was no reply, nothing save the very cold hand given in response to Beason's. But that was only for the instant. And then the man in him, those things which made him more than a great scientist, things more than mind, not even to be comprehended under soul, those fundamental things which made him a man, rose up and conquered. He straightened up, smiled a little, and then heartily, quite sunnily, came the words: "Take a brace, Beason—take a good brace. And good luck to you, boy—good luck."

The door had closed. At last he was alone again. Dizzy with the strain he staggered to a chair. For a long time he sat there, many emotions struggling in his face. He could not see it yet—not quite. It was all very new, and uncertain. But 'way out there in the darkness it seemed there was perhaps something waiting for him to grasp. He would never give that other message, but it might be, if he worked hard enough, and never faltered, he could learn to say to the world which had given him this, say heartily, quite sunnily: "Good luck to you. Good luck."



CHAPTER XVII

DISTANT STRAINS OF TRIUMPH

It worried Ernestine when she saw Dr. Parkman's motor car stopping before the house early Tuesday morning. He had been there the afternoon before, and then again late in the evening, bringing another doctor with him. He said that they simply came to help keep Karl amused; but surely he would not be coming again this morning if there were not something more serious than she knew. Karl had come home from the university about noon the day before, saying that his head was bad and he was going to consider himself "all in" for the day. Something about him had frightened her, but he insisted that it only showed what a headache could do to a fellow who was not accustomed to it. He had remained in his darkened room all day, not even turning his face from the wall when she came in to do things for him. That worried her, and even the doctor's assurance that he was not going to be ill had not sufficed. In fact, she thought Dr. Parkman was acting strangely himself.

"I was out in this part of town and thought I'd drop in," he told her, as she opened the door for him.