"You're not worried about Karl?" she demanded.

He was hanging up his cap. "You see, I don't want him to get up and go over to the university," he said, after a minute's pause, in which she thought he had not heard her question. "That wouldn't be good for his eyes."

"Well, doctor, what is it about his eyes? Is it just—something that must run its course?"

"Oh, yes," he answered, and she was a little hurt by the short way he said it. Was it not the most natural thing in the world she should want to know? Really, doctors might be a little more satisfactory, she thought, as she told him he would find Karl in his room.

She herself went into the library. Down in the next block she saw the postman, and thought she would wait for him. She felt all unnerved this morning. Things were happening which she did not understand, and then she felt so "left out of things." She wanted to do things for Karl; she would love to hover over him while he was not well, but he seemed to prefer being let alone; and as for Dr. Parkman, there was no sense in his adopting so short and professional a manner with her.

But as she stood there by the window, the bright morning sunlight fell upon her ruby, and she smiled. She loved her ring so! It was so dear of Karl to get it for her. The warm, deep lights in it seemed to symbolise their love, and it would always be associated with that first night she had worn it, that beautiful hour when they sat together before the fire. That had been its baptism in love.

The postman was at the door now, and she hurried to meet him. She was much interested in the mail these days, for surely she would hear any time now regarding her picture in Paris.

It had come! The topmost letter had a foreign stamp, and she recognised the writing of Laplace.

Heart beating very fast, she started up to her studio. She wanted to be up there, all by herself, when she read this letter. As she passed Karl's door she heard Dr. Parkman telling about having punctured a tire on his machine the night before. Of course then everything really was all right, or he would not have talked about trivial things like that.

Her fingers fumbled so that she could scarcely open the envelope. And then she tried to laugh herself out of that, prepare for disappointment. Why, what in the world did she expect?

As she read the letter her face went very white, her fingers trembled more and more. Then she had to go back and read it sentence by sentence. It was too much to take in all at once.

It was not so much that it had been awarded a medal; not so much that a great London collector—Laplace said he was the most discriminating collector he knew—wanted to buy it. The overwhelming thing was that the critics of Paris treated it as something entitled to their very best consideration. The medal and the sale might have come by chance, but something about these clippings he had enclosed seemed to stand for achievement. They said that "The Hidden Waterfall," by a young American artist, was one of the most live and individual things of the exhibition. They mentioned things in her work which were poor—but not one of them passed her over lightly!

She grew very quiet as she sat there thinking about it. The consciousness of it surged through and through her, but she sat quite motionless. It seemed too big a thing for mere rejoicing. For what it meant Was that the years had not played her false. It meant the justification—exaltation—of something her inmost self.

And it meant that the future was hers to take! She leaned forward as if looking into the coming years, eyes shining with aspiration, cheeks flushed with triumph. She quivered with desire—the desire to express what she knew was within her.

It was while lost to her joy and her dreaming that she heard a step upon the stairs. She started up—instantly broken from the magic of the moment. Perhaps Karl needed her. And then before she reached the door she knew that it was Karl himself. How very strange!

"Oh, Karl!"—not able to contain it a minute—"I want to tell you—" and then, startled as he stumbled a little, and going down a few steps to meet him—"but isn't there too much light up here? Shouldn't you stay down in the dark?"

"I don't want to stay down in the dark!"—he said it with a low intensity which startled her, and then she laughed.

"I've always heard there was nothing so perverse as a sick man. I'll tell you what's the matter with you. You're lonesome. You're tired of getting along without me—now aren't you? But we'll go down to the library, and down there I'll tell you—oh, what I'll tell you! I thought Dr. Parkman was going to stay with you a while,"—as he did not speak—"or I shouldn't have come away."

He had seated himself, and was rubbing his head, as though it pained him. His eyes were hidden, but his face, in this bright light, made her want to cry, it told so plainly of his suffering. He reached out his hand for hers. "I didn't want him any longer, liebchen,"—he said it much like a little child—"I want—you."

"Of course you do,"—tenderly—"and I'm the one for you to have. But not up here. The light is too bright up here."

She pulled at his hand as if to induce him to rise. But he made no movement to do so, and he did not seem to have heard what she said. "Ernestine," he said, in a low voice—there was something not just natural in Karl's voice, a tiredness, a something gone from it—"will you do something for me?"

She sat down on the arm of his chair, her arm about him with her warm impulsiveness. "Why Karl, dear"—a light kiss upon his hair—"you know I would do anything in the world for you."

"I want you to show me your pictures,"—he said it abruptly, shortly. "I want to look at them this morning;—all of them."

"But—but Karl," she gasped, rising in her astonishment—"not now!"

"Yes—now. You promised. You said you'd do anything in the world for me."

"But not something that will hurt you!"

"It won't hurt me,"—still abruptly, shortly.

"But I know better than that! Why any one knows that eyes in bad condition mustn't be used. And looking at pictures—up here in this bright light—so needless—so crazy,"—she laughed, though she was puzzled and worried.

He was silent, and something in his bearing went to her heart. His head, his shoulders, his whole being seemed bowed. It was so far from Karl's real self. "Any other time, dear," she said, very gently. "You know I would love to do it, but some time when you are better able to look at them."

"I'm just as able to look at them now as I will ever be," he said, slowly. "Ernestine—please."

"But Karl,"—her voice quivering—"I just can't bear to do a thing that will do you harm."

"It won't do me harm. I give you my word of honour it won't make any serious difference."

"But Dr. Parkman said—"

"I give you my word of honour," he repeated, a little sharply.

"All right, then," she relented, reluctantly, and darkened the room a little.

"Dear,"—sitting on a stool beside him—"you're perfectly sure this trouble with your eyes isn't any more serious than you think?"

"Yes," he answered, firmly enough, but something in his voice sounded queer, "I'm perfectly sure of that."

"Show me your pictures, Ernestine," laying his hand upon her hair; "I've taken a particular notion that I want to see them."

"But first"—carried back to it—"I want to tell you something." She laughed, excitedly. "I was coming down to tell you as soon as the doctor left. Oh Karl—my picture in Paris—I heard from it this morning, and its success has been—tremendous!" She laughed happily over the word and did not think why it was Karl's hand gripped her shoulder in that quick, tight way. "Shall I read you all about it, dear? And then will you promise to cheer right up?"

Still that tight grip upon her shoulder! It hurt a little, but she did not mind—it just showed how much Karl cared. The hand was still there as she read the letter, and then the clippings which told of the rare quality of her work, predicted the great things she was sure to do,—sometimes it tightened a little, and sometimes it relaxed, and once, with a quick movement he stooped down and turned her ring around, turning the stone to the inside of her hand.

When she had finished he was quite still for a long minute. He was breathing hard;—Karl was excited about it too! And then he stooped over and kissed her forehead, and it startled her to feel that his lips were very cold.

"Liebchen," he said, his voice trembling a bit—Karl did care so much!—"I am glad." For a minute he was very still again, and then he added, seeming to mean a different thing by it—"I am very glad."

"It's gone to my head a little, Karl! Oh I'm perfectly willing to admit it has. I don't think I should appreciate the Gloria Victis very much myself this morning," she laughed, happily.

She was too absorbed to notice the quick little drawing in of his breath, or his silence. "After all, it would be a sorry thing if I didn't succeed," she pursued, gayly, "for you stand so for success that we couldn't be so close together—could we, dear—if I were a dismal failure?"

"You think not?" he asked—and she wondered if he had taken a little cold; his voice sounded that way.

"Oh I don't mean that too literally. But I like the idea of our going through the same experiences—both succeeding. It seems to me I can understand you better this morning than I ever did before. I read a little poem last night, and at the time I liked it so much. It is about success, or rather about not succeeding. But I'm afraid it wouldn't appeal to me very much just now,"—again she laughed, happily, and it was well for the happiness that she was not looking at him then.

"What was it?" he asked, as he saw she was going to turn around to him. "Say it."

"Part of it was like this":

'Not one of all the purple host Who took the flag to-day Can tell the definition So clear, of victory,

As he, defeated, dying, On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Break agonized and clear.'

"Say that last verse again," he said, his voice thick and low;—Karl was so different when he was sick!

"As he, defeated, dying, On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Break agonized and clear."

"It is beautiful, isn't it?" she said, as he did not speak.

"Beautiful? I don't know. I suppose it is. I was thinking that quite likely it is true."

"But I didn't suppose you would care about it, Karl. I supposed you would feel about it as you did about the statue."

"I wonder," he began, slowly, not seeming sure of what he wanted to say—"how much the comprehension, the understanding of things, that the loss would bring, would make up for the success taken away? I wonder just what the defeated fellow could work out of that?"

"But dearie, is it true? Why can failure comprehend success any more than success can comprehend failure?"

"It's different," he said, shortly.

"How do you know?" she asked banteringly. "What do you know about it? You don't even know how to spell the word failure!"

He started to say something, but stopped, and then he stooped over and rested his head for a minute upon her hair. "Tell me about your picture, Ernestine," he said, quietly, after that. "Tell me just what it is."

"The Hidden Waterfall? Why you know it, Karl."

"Yes, but I want to hear you talk about it. I want to hear you tell just what it means."

"Well, you remember it is a child standing in a beautiful part of the woods. It is spring-time, as it seems best it should be when you are painting a child in the woods. I tried to make the picture breathe spring, and you know one of the writers said that the delicious thing about it was the way you got the smell of the woods;—that pleased me. Behind the child, visible in the picture, but invisible to the child, is a waterfall. The most vital thing in the universe to me was to have that waterfall make a sound. I think it does, or the picture wouldn't mean anything at all. And then of course the heart of the picture is in the child's face—the puzzled surprise, the glad wonder, and then deeper than that the response to something which cannot be understood. It might have been called 'Wondering,' or even 'Mystery,' but I liked the simpler title better. And I like that idea of painting, not just nature, but what nature means to man. I want to get at the response—the thing awakened—the things given back. Don't you see how that translates the spirit there is between nature and man—stands for the oneness?"

He nodded, seeming to be thinking. "I see," he said at last. "I wonder if you know all that means?"

"Why, yes, I think I do. My next picture will get at it in a—um—a more mature way."

"Tell me about it."

"I don't know that I can, very well. It's hard to put pictures into words. I fear it will sound very conventional as I tell it, but of course it is what one puts into it that makes for individuality. It is in the woods, too. You know, Karl, how I love the woods. And I know them! It is not spring now, but middle summer; no suggestion of fall, but mature summer. A girl—just about such a girl as I was before you came that day and changed everything—had gone into the woods with a couple of books. She had been sitting under a tree, reading. But in the picture she is standing up very straight, leaning against the tree, the books overturned and forgotten at her feet—drawn into the bigger book—see? It is not that she has consciously yielded herself. It is not that she is consciously doing anything. She is listening—oh how she listens and longs! For what, none of us know—she least of all. Perhaps to the far off call of life and love speaking through the tender spirit of the woods. Oh how I love that girl!—and believe in her—and hope for her. In her eyes are the dreams of centuries. And don't you see that it is the same idea—the oneness—the openness of nature to the soul open to it?"

"And you are going to make the woods very beautiful?" he asked, after a little thought. "More than just the beauty of trees and grass and colour?"

"Yes, the beauty that calls to one.

"Then," he said this a little timidly—"might it not be striking to have your girl, not really seeing it with the eyes at all? Have her eyes—closed, perhaps, but she feeling it, knowing it, in the higher sense really seeing it, just the same?"

She thought about that a minute. "N—o, Karl; I think not. It seems to me she must be open to it in every way to make it stand for life, in the sense I want it to."

"Perhaps," he said, his voice drooping a little. And then, abruptly: "Have you done any of that?"

"Oh, just some little sketches."

"Show me the little sketches," he begged. "I want to see them all."

"Oh, but Karl, they wouldn't convey the idea at all. Wait until it is farther along."

"No, please show them this morning,"—softly, persuasively.

She was puzzled, and reluctant, but she got them out, and with them other things to show him. He asked many questions. In the sketches she was going to develop he would know just how she was going to elaborate them. He asked her to tell just how they would look when worked out. "I'm a sick boy home from school," he said, "and I must be amused." And then he looked at her finished pictures; she protested against the intentness with which he looked at some of them, insisting they were not worth the strain she could see it was on his eyes. "It's queer about finished pictures," she laughed; "they're not half so great and satisfying as the pictures you are going to do next." It went through her with a sharp pain to see Karl hurting his eyes as she knew he was hurting them. She could not understand his insistence; it was not like him to be so unreasonable. And he looked so terribly—so worn and ill; if only he would go to bed and let her take care of him! But he seemed intent on knowing all there was to know about the pictures. A strange whim for him to cling to this way! As he looked he wanted her to talk about them—tell just what this and that meant, insisting upon getting the full significance of it all.

He had never before appreciated her firm grasp. Her work in these different stages of evolution gave him a clearer idea of how much she had worked and studied, how seriously and intelligently she had set out for the mastery of her craft. He had always known that the poetic impulses were there, the desire to express, the ideas, the delight in colour, but he saw now the other things; this was letting him into the workman's side of her work.

He spoke of that, and she laughed. "Yes, this is what they don't see. This is what they never know. Poetic impulses don't paint pictures, Karl. That's the incentive; the thing that keeps one at it, but you can't do it without these tricks of the trade which mean just downright work. I've never worked on a picture yet in which I wasn't almost fatally handicapped by this thing of not knowing enough. The bigger your idea, the more skill, cunning, fairly, you must have to force it into life."

She told him at last that they were through. They had even looked at rude little sketches she had made of places they had cared for in Europe. Indeed he looked very long at some of those little sketches of places they had loved.

"One thing more," he said; "you told me once you had some water colour daubs you did when a little girl. Let me look at them. I just want to see," he laughed, "how they compare."

And so she got them out, and they looked them over, laughing at them. "You've gone a long way," he said, pushing them aside, as if suddenly tired.

He leaned back in his chair, his hand above his eyes, as she began gathering up the things. "And so here I am," she said, waving her hand to include the things about her, "surrounded by the things I've done. Not a vast array, and some of it not amounting to much, but it's I, dear. It reflects me all through these years."

"I know," he said—"that's just it,"—and at the way he said it she looked up quickly. "You're tired, Karl. It's been too much. We'll go down stairs now, and rest."

He watched her as she gathered the things together. It seemed he had never really known this Ernestine before. Here was indeed the atmosphere of work, the joy of working, all the earnestness and enthusiasm of the real worker. And then, with masterful effort, he roused himself. He had not yet touched what he had come to know.

"I have been thinking," he began, "a little about the psychology of all this. You'll think I'm developing a wonderful interest in art, but you see I'm laid up and can't do my own work, so I'm entitled to some thoughts about art. Now these things you paint grow out of a mental image—don't they, dear? The things you paint the mind sees first, so that the mental image is the true one, and then you—approximate. I should think then that it might help you to tell about pictures. For instance, if in painting a picture you had to tell about it to some one who did not look at it, wouldn't that make your own mental image more clear, and so help make it more real to you?'

"Why, Karl, I never thought of it, but,"—meditatively—"yes, I believe it would."

He turned away that she might not see the gladness in his face. "And it would be interesting—wouldn't it—to see just how good a conception you could give of the picture through words?"

"Yes," she said, interested now—"it would be a way of feeling one's own grip on it."

"Of course," he continued, "that couldn't be done except in a case, like yours and mine, where people were close together."

"Yes," she assented, "and that in itself would show that they were close together."

At that he laid a quick hand upon her hair, caressing it.

"Oh, after all, dear,"—gathering up the last of the sketches—"the greatest thing in the world is to do one's work—isn't it?"

"Yes," he said, and his voice was low and tired, "unless the greatest thing in the world is to submit to the inevitable."

She looked up quickly. "That doesn't sound like you."

"Doesn't it? Oh, well,"—with a little laugh—"you know a scientist is supposed to be capable of a good deal of change in the point of view."

He had risen, and was at the door. "It's been good of you to do all this, Ernestine."

"Why it has been a delight to me, dear; if only it hasn't hurt you. But it is time now to go down where it is dark."

"Yes," he assented wearily; "it is time now to go down where it is dark."



CHAPTER XVIII

TELLING ERNESTINE

He had thought to tell her on Tuesday, but after their talk, when he took his last look at her pictures—it had tortured both eyes and heart to do that, but he knew in the days ahead that he would be unsatisfied with having passed it by—he could not bring himself then to do it. He could not keep it from her long now, but she was so happy that day in her triumph about the picture. He was going to darken all of her days to come; he would leave her this one more unclouded. But it was hard for him to go through with it. He longed for her so! He must have her help. He had asked for the pictures before telling her just because he knew it would be unbearable for them both, if she did know. It would need to be done in that casual way or not at all. It was strange how he felt he must see them. It was his longing to keep close to her. He could not bear the thought that his blindness might make him to her as something apart from life, even though the dearest thing of all. He must enter into every channel of her life.

It was Wednesday now, and he had told her. All the night before he had lain awake trying to think of words which would hurt her the least. He would put it very tenderly to his poor Ernestine. He would even pretend he saw some way ahead, something to do. Ernestine could not bear it unless he did that. It was the one thing which remained for him now—to make it easy for her.

This was firmly fixed in his mind when he told her that morning he wanted to talk to her about something and asked her to come into the library. He was sure he had himself well in hand; the words were upon his lips. And then when he said: "I want to tell you something, dear—something that will hurt you very much. I never wanted to hurt you; I can not help it now,"—when he had said that, and she, with quick response to the sorrow in his voice, had knelt beside him, her arms about his neck, something,—the feel of her arms, the knowing there was some one now to help him—swept away the words and his broken-hearted cry had been: "Oh, sweetheart—help me! I'm going blind!"

Those first moments took from her something of youth and gladness she would never regain. First frozen with horror, then clinging to him wildly, sobbing that it could not be so—that Dr. Parkman, some one, would do something about it; protesting in a fierce outburst of the love which rose within her that it did not matter, that she would make it all up to him—their love make it right—in one moment stricken dumb as comprehension of it grew upon her, in another wildly defying fate, but always clinging to him, holding him so close, trying, though frightened and broken, to stand between him and the awful thing as the mother would stand between the child and its destroyer, Ernestine left with that hour things never to be claimed again. And when at last she began to sob—sobbing as he had never heard any one sob before—all his heart was roused for her, and he patted her head, kissed her hair, whispering: "Little one, little one, don't. We'll bear it together—some way."

During that hour she never loosened her arms about his neck. Deep in his despairing heart there glowed one warm spark. Ernestine would cling to him as she had never done before. God had not gone out of the world then. He had let fate strike a fearful blow, but He had left to the wounded heart such love as this.

"Dear," she said at last, her cheek against his, her dear, quivering voice trying so hard to be brave, "if you feel like telling me everything, I would like to know. I will be quiet. I will be good. But I want to bear every bit of it with you. Every bit of it, darling—now, and always. That is all I ask—that you let me bear it with you."

The love, the understanding, the longing to help, which were in her voice opened that innermost chamber of his heart to her. If she had not won this victory now, she could never have done so in the days ahead. This hour made possible the other hours of pouring out his heart to her, taking her into it all. He told her the story of how it happened, the long, hard story which only covered days, but seemed to extend through years. He told of those hours of the day and night on the rack of uncertainty, of trying with the force of mind and soul to banish that thing which had not claimed him then, but stood there beside him, not retreating,—waiting. He told her of that lecture hour Monday morning when he literally divided himself into two parts, one part of him giving the lecture, giving it just as well as he had ever done, the other part battling with the phantom which he would vanquish or surrender to within an hour. And her only cry was: "You should have told me! You should have told me from the first!" And once he answered: "No, dear—no; before I knew I did not want to frighten you, and after—oh, Ernestine, believe me, sweetheart, I would have shielded you forever, no matter at what cost to myself—if only I could have done it!"

At last he had finished the story. He had told it all; of sitting there afraid to look, of looking and seeing and comprehending. Oh how he had comprehended! It was as if his mind too, his mind trained to grasp things, had turned against him, was stabbing him with its relentless clearness of vision. He told her of the merciless comprehension with which he saw the giving up of his work, the changing of his life, the giving up—the eternal giving up. He told her of how it had seemed to mean the making over of his soul. For his soul had always cried for conquest, for victory, for doing things. How would he turn it now to submission, to surrender, to relinquishment? Everything had been tumbling about him, he said, when that knock came at the door as the call from life, the intrusion of those everyday things which would not let him alone, even in an hour like that. And then of the boy with his paltry trouble which seemed great—the hurts—the final rising up of the instinct to help, despite it all. Then of sitting there alone and seeing a faint light in the distance, wondering if, in all new and different ways, he could not keep his place in the world.

"Oh help me to do that, sweetheart! Help me to keep right! Don't let me lose out with those other things of life!"

Her arms about his neck! He would never forget how she clung to him. There was a long silence when their souls reached one another as they had never done before. The quivering of her body, her breath upon his cheek—they told him all. But after that, the words did come to her; broken words struggling to tell of what her love would do to make it right; how she would be with him, so close, so unfailing, that the darkness would never find him alone.

His arms about her tightened. Thank God—oh yes, a million times thank God for Ernestine!

Then he felt her start; there came a sound as though she would say something, but choked it back.

"Yes, dear?" he said gently.

"Oh, Karl, I shouldn't ask it. It will hurt you. I shouldn't ask."

"I would rather you did, dear. Ask anything. We are holding nothing from one another now."

"I just happened to think—I wanted to know—oh Karl, it wasn't in your eye on my birthday, was it? It hadn't happened—wasn't happening—when we sat there by the fire, happier than we had ever been before?"

His impulse was to hold that back. Why should he put that upon her, too, to hurt her as it had him, shake her faith as it had tried to shake his?

But his moment of silence could not be redeemed. "Karl,"—her voice was strangely quiet—"it wasn't, was it?"

He groaned, and she had her answer.

She sprang away from him, standing straight. "Then," she cried—he would never have dreamed Ernestine's voice could have sounded like that—"I hate the world! I despise it! I will not have anything to do with it! It fooled us—cheated us—made fun of us! I'll despise it—fight it"—the words became incoherent, the sobs grew very wild, she sank to the floor, crouching there, her hands clenched, sobbing: "I hate it! Oh how I want to pay it back!"

He was long in quieting her, but at last she would listen to him.

"Ernestine," he said, his voice almost stern, "if you start out like that you cannot help me. It is to you I look. If you love me, Ernestine, help me not to hate the world. If we hate the world, we have given up. Sweetheart,"—the voice changed on that word—"even yet—even yet in a different way, I want to win. I cannot do it alone. I cannot do it at all, if you hate the world. You are to be my eyes, Ernestine. You are to see the beautiful things for me. You are to make me love them more than I ever did before. You are to be the light—don't you see, sweetheart? And you cannot do it, don't you see you cannot, if your own heart is not right with the world?"

She did not answer, but she came back to his arms. Her quick breath told him how hard she was trying.

"See your statue up there, liebchen? Remember how you always liked it? What you said about it that night? Oh, Ernestine"—crushing her to him—"help me to grip tight to my broken sword!"



CHAPTER XIX

INTO THE DARK

She was with him as he went then into the dark. She did not fail him in anything: the hand in his, the little strokes of genius in holding his mind, and when they went into the deeps where words were not fitted for utterance she did not fail him in those other things. He knew that as she clung to him with loving arms, so her spirit reached out to him in the demand that it be permitted to sustain.

Through the day and through the night she was with him now. There was no time when he could not reach out to find her, no bad dream from which he could not awaken to put his hand upon her and know that she was there. And when, time after time, bitterness rose up to submerge his soul, he could always finally shake it off by thanking God for Ernestine.

For a time the pain in his eyes served as a kindly antidote. The light was going out with so intense a suffering as to mitigate the suffering in the consciousness of its going. It was the pain in his temples helped him hold off the pain of giving up his work. It was not a thing conquered; he knew that the deeper pain was waiting for him out there in the darkness when the pain of transition should have ceased, leaving only a blank, a darkness, no other thing to engage for him any part of his mind. There was blessedness in the temporary alleviation brought by the pain that was physical. There were many things for him to meet out there. They were willing to wait. Now his fighting powers were so well engaged as to take something from the reality of a future battlefield.

In many ways it was not as he would have imagined it had he known of such a thing. He would have thought of it as one long mood of despair, inflamed at times by the passion of rebellion. There were, in truth, many moods. In hours when he was quiet they spoke of the things they had seen and loved, of Italy and the Alps they spoke often, struggling for the words to paint a picture. Sometimes she read a little to him—there would be much of that now. Through it all, they seized upon anything which would sustain each other. Once when he saw her faltering he told her that he thought after awhile he would write a book. He did not call it a text-book; did not speak of it as the kind of work to which a man sometimes turns when his creative work is done. He had always thought that when he was sixty or seventy he might write a few books. He would write them now at forty.

And when there came times of its being utterly unbearable, they were either silent or trivial.

Bitter questionings filled Ernestine's heart in those days. How was she going to watch him suffer and not hate a universe permitting his sufferings? How care for a world of beauty he could not see? How watch his heart break for the work taken from him and keep her belief in an order of things under which that was enacted? How love a world that had turned upon him like that? That was what he asked her to do. It seemed to her, now, impossible.

With him, as the bearing of the physical pain grew mechanical and the other things grew nearer, the worst of it was wondering what he should do with the days that were ahead. His spirit would not go with his sight. His desire to do was not to be crushed with his ability for doing. What then of the empty days to come? How smother the passion for his work? And if he did smother it, what remained? While he lived, how deafen himself to the call of life? Through what channel could he hope to work out the things that were in him? And how remain himself if constantly denying to himself the things which were his? It was that tormented him more than the relinquishing of the specific thing he had believed would crown the work of his life. His fight now would be a fight for clinging to that in him which was fundamental. But with what weapon should he fight?

Many times he failed to bear it in conformity with his ideal of bearing it. There were hours of not bearing it at all; hours of cursing his fate and damning the world. Then it was her touch upon his hand, her tear upon his cheek, her broken word which could bring him again into the sphere of what he desired to be. His desire to help her in bearing it, his thankfulness in having her,—those the factors in his control.

There were two weeks of that: weeks in which two frightened, baffled souls fought for strength to accept and power to readjust. Their failures, the doubts, the rage, they sought to keep from each other; their hard won victories, their fought for courage they gave to the uttermost. A failure of one was a failure for one; but a victory of one was a victory for two. It was through that method courage succeeded in some measure in holding its own against bitter abandonment to despair.

His last looks were at her face. It was that he would take with him into the darkness. As a man setting sail for a far country seeks to the last the face upon the shore, so his last seeing gaze rested yearningly upon the dear face that was to pass forever from his vision. And when the end had come, when hungering eyes turned to the face they could not see, and he knew with the certainty of encountered reality that he would never again see the love lights in her eyes, that others would respond to the smile that was gone from him forever, others read in her face the things from which he was shut out, when he knew he would never again watch the laughter creep into her eyes and the firelight play upon her hair, it came upon him as immeasurably beyond all power to endure, and in that hour he broke down and in the refuge of her arms gave way to the utter anguish of his heart. And she, all of her soul roused in the passion to comfort him, whispered hotly, the fierce tenderness of the defending mother in her voice:

"You shall not suffer! You shall not! I will make it up to you! I will make it right!"



PART TWO



CHAPTER XX

MARRIAGE AND PAPER BAGS

It was evident that peace did not sit enthroned in Georgia's soul. Her movements were not calm and self-contained as one by one she removed the paper bags from her typewriter. "So silly!"—she sputtered to herself. What were the men in this office, anyway? College freshmen? Hanging paper bags all over her things every time she stepped out of the office—and just because one of her friends happened to be in the paper bag business! She'd like to know—as she pounded out her opening sentence with vindictiveness—if it wasn't just as good a business as newspaper reporting?

It was not a good day for teasing Georgia. She did not like the story she had been working on that morning. "Go out to the university," the city editor had said, "and get a good first-day-of-school story. Make the feature of it the reorganisation of Dr. Hubers' department, and use some human interest stuff about his old laboratory—the more of that the better."

She hated it! Were they never going to let Karl alone? Was it decent to put his own cousin on the story? Georgia's chin quivered as she wrote that part about Karl's laboratory. "If my own mother were killed in the street," she told herself, trying to blink back the tears, "I suppose they'd make me handle it because I know more about her than any one else in the office!"

Resentment grew with the turning of each sentence. They knew that Karl was her cousin, and almost as close to her as her own brother. She was sure they had seen the tear stains on some of that maudlin copy she had handed in about him. When she turned in her story she was unable to contain herself longer.

"Mr. Lewis," she said, voice quivering, "here is another one of those outrageous stories about my cousin, Dr. Hubers. When you ask me to write the next one, you may consider it an invitation for my resignation." And then, cheeks very red, she went back to her desk and began getting up some stuff for her column "Just Dogs," which they had been running on the editorial page.

When the city editor was passing her desk about half an hour later he stopped and asked, very respectfully and meekly—Georgia was far too good to lose: "Miss McCormick, will you see Dr. Parkman some time before to-morrow, and ask him about this hospital story? You know, Miss McCormick, you're the only reporter in town he'll see."

"Very well," said Georgia, with dignity.

All summer long the papers had been printing stories about Karl. It made her loathe newspaper work every time she thought about it. To think of their hacking at him like that—and he so quiet and dignified and brave! A picture printed the Sunday before, of Karl fumbling his way around, had made her more furious than she had ever been in all her life.

She turned just in time to see a grinning reporter writing on the bulletin board: "Miss G. McCormick—Human interest story about the inner life of a paper bag."

Sometimes it might have brought a smile, usually it would have fired her to the desired rage, but to-day it contributed to her tearfulness. "Oh they needn't worry," she murmured, bending her head over a drawer, and tossing things about furiously, "there's no getting married for me! This office has settled that!"

The city editor seemed to take special delight in sending her out on every story which would "give married life a black eye." When the father left the little children destitute, when the mother ran away with the other man, or the jealous wife shot the other woman, Georgia was always right on the spot because they said she was so clever at that sort of thing. "Oh it makes one just crazy to get married," she had said, witheringly, to Joe one night.

Why did he want to marry her, anyway? When she told him she didn't want to—wasn't that enough? Was it respectful to treat her refusal as though it were a subtle kind of joke? Various nice boys had wanted at various times to marry her, and she had always explained to them that it was impossible, and sent them, more or less cheerfully, on their various ways. But this man who made paper bags, this jolly, good-natured, seemingly easy-going fellow, who held that the most important thing in the world was for her, Georgia, to have a good time, only seemed much amused at the idea of her not having time to marry him, and when she told him, with just as much conviction as she had ever told any of the others, that he had better begin looking around for some one else, he would reply, "All right—sure," and would straightway ask where she wished to go for dinner that night or whether she preferred an automobile ride to a spin in his new motor boat. Now what was one to do with a man like that? A man who laughed at refusals and mellowed with each passing snub!

"Telephone, Miss McCormick,"—the boy sang out from the booth. The opening "Hello" was very short, but the voice changed oddly on the "Oh, Ernestine." Her whole face softened. It was another Georgia now. "Why certainly—I'll get them for you; you know I love to do things for you down town, but my dear—what in the world do you want with flower seeds this time of year?"—"Oh—I see; planted in the fall—but the flowers that bloom in the spring—tra la."

They chatted for a little while and after Georgia had hung up the receiver she sat there looking straight into the phone—her face as dreamy as Georgia's freckled face well could be. "By Jinks,"—she was saying to herself—"it can be like that!" It was a most opportune time for the paper bag man to telephone. He wondered why her voice was so soft, and why there was not the usual plea about being too busy when he asked her to meet him at the little Japanese place for a cup of tea. "And it's positively heroic of Joe to drink that tea," she smiled to herself, as she wrestled with her shirt waist sleeves and her jacket.

But out on the street she grew stern with herself. "Now don't go and do any fool thing," she admonished. "Don't jump at conclusions. You aren't Ernestine, and he isn't Karl. He's Joseph Tank—of all abominable names! And he makes paper bags—of all ridiculous things! Tank's Paper Bags!" she guessed not! Suppose in some rash moment she did marry him. People would say: "What business is your husband in?" And she would choke down her rage and reply—"Why—why he makes paper bags!"

He was sitting there waiting for her, smiling. He was awfully good about waiting for her, and about smiling. It was nice to sit down in this cool, restful place and be looked after. He had a book which she had spoken about the week before, and he had a little pin, a dear little thing with a dog's head on it which he had seen in a window and thought should belong to her. And he was on track of the finest collie in the United States. After all, he thought it would be better for her to have a collie than a bulldog. She was losing ground! She was being very nice to him, and she had firmly intended telling him once for all that she could never marry a man whose name was Tank, and who contributed to the atrocities of fate by making paper bags. And then she had a beautiful thought. Perhaps he would be willing to go away somewhere and live it down. He might go to Boston and go into the book publishing business. Surely publishing books in Boston would go a long way toward removing the stigma of having made paper bags in Chicago. And meanwhile, sighing contentedly, and fastening on her new pin, as long as she was here she might as well forget about things and enjoy herself.



CHAPTER XXI

FACTORY-MADE OPTIMISM

The usual congested conditions existed in Dr. Parkman's waiting room when Georgia arrived a little after five. An attendant who knew her, and who had great respect for any girl Dr. Parkman would see on non-professional business, took her into the inner of inners, where, comfortably installed, sat Professor Hastings.

"Glad to have you join me," he said; "I feel like an imposter, getting in ahead of these people."

"Oh, I'm used to side doors," laughed Georgia.

They chatted about how it had begun to rain, how easy it was for it to rain in Chicago, and in a few minutes the doctor came in.

He nodded to them, almost staggered to a chair, sank into it, and leaning back, said nothing at all.

"Why, doctor," gasped Georgia, after a minute, "can't you take something? Why you're simply all in!"

He roused up then. "I am—a—little fagged. Fearful day!"

"Well, for heaven's sake get up and take off that wet coat! Here,"—rising to help him—"I've always heard that doctors had absolutely no sense. Sitting around in a wet coat!"

"I wonder," he said, after another minute of resting, "why any man ever takes it into his head he wants to be a doctor?"

"And all day long," she laughed, "I've been wondering why any girl ever takes it into her head she wants to be a newspaper reporter."

"Speaking of the pleasant features of my business," she went on, "I may as well spring this first as last. Here am I, a more or less sensible young woman, come to ask you, a man whose time is worth—well, let's say a thousand dollars a second—what you intend doing about those hospital interns getting drunk last night!"

"My dear Miss Georgia,"—brushing out his hand in a characteristic way which seemed to be sweeping things aside—"go back to your paper and say that for all I care every intern in Chicago may get drunk every night in the week."

"Bully story!"

"And furthermore, every paper in Chicago may go to the devil, and every hospital may go trailing along for company. Oh Lord—I'm tired."

He looked it. It seemed to Georgia she had never understood what tiredness meant before.

"Such a hard day?" Professor Hastings asked.

"Oh—just one of the days when everything goes wrong. Rotten business—anyway. Eternally patching things up. I'd like to be a—well, a bridge builder for awhile, and see how it felt to get good stuff to start with."

"And now, to round out your day pleasantly," laughed Professor Hastings, "I've come to tell you about a boy out there at the university who is in very bad need of patching up."

"What about him?" and it was interesting to see that some of the tiredness seemed to fall from him as he straightened up to listen.

Georgia rose to go, but he told her to stay, he might feel more in the mood for drunken interns by and by.

He arranged with Professor Hastings about the student; and it was when the older man was about to leave that he asked, a little hesitatingly, about Dr. Hubers. "I have been away all summer," he told the doctor, "and have not seen him yet."

Georgia was watching Dr. Parkman. His face just then told many things.

"You will find him—quite natural," he answered, in a constrained voice.

"One hardly sees how that can be possible," said the professor sadly.

"Oh, his pleasantness and naturalness will not deceive you much. Your eyes can take in a few things, and then his voice—gives him away a little. But he won't have anything to say about—the change."

He shook his head. "I'm afraid that's so much the worse."

"Perhaps, but—"

"Karl never was one to get much satisfaction out of telling his troubles," Georgia finished for him.

"Hastings," said the doctor, jerkily, and he seemed almost like one speaking against his will—"what do you make out of it? Don't you think it—pretty wasteful?"

"Yes—wasteful!" he went on, in response to the inquiring look. "I mean just that. There are a lot of people," he spoke passionately now, "who seem to think there is some sort of great design in the world. What in heaven's name would they say about this? Do you see anything high and fine and harmonious about it?"

That last with a sneer, and he stopped with an ugly laugh. "They make me tired—those people who have so much to say about the world being so right and lovely. They might travel with me on my rounds for a day or two. One day would finish a good deal of this factory-made optimism."

"Does Dr. Hubers feel—as you do?" Hastings asked, not quite concealing the anxiety in the question.

"How in God's name could he feel any other way?—though it's hard making him out,"—turning to Georgia, who nodded understandingly. "Just when he's ready to let himself go he'll pull himself together and say it's so nice to have plenty of time for reading, that Ernestine has been reading a lot of great things to him this summer, and he believes now he is really going to begin to get an education. But does that make you feel any better about it? God!—I was out there the other day, and when I saw the grey hairs in his head, the lines this summer has put in his face, when I saw he was digging his finger nails down into his hands to keep himself together while he talked to me about turning his cancer work over to some other man—I tell you it went just a little beyond my power to endure, and I turned in then and there and expressed my opinion of a God who would permit such things to happen! And then what did he do? Got a little white around the lips for a minute, looked for just a second as though he were going to turn in with me, and then he smiled a little and said in a quiet, rather humorous way that made me feel about ten years old: 'Oh, leave God out of it, Parkman. I don't think he had much of a hand in this piece of work. If you must damn something, damn my own carelessness.'"

"He said that? He can see it like that?"—there was no mistaking the approval in Professor Hastings' eager voice.

"Huh!"—the doctor was feeling too deeply to be conscious of the rudeness in the scoff. "So you figure it out like that—do you? And you get some satisfaction out of that way of looking at it? The scheme of things is very fine, but he must pay the penalty of his own oversight, weakness—carelessness—whatever you choose to call it. Well, I don't think I care much about a system that fixes its penalties in that particular way. When I see men every day who violate every natural law and don't pay any heavier penalty than an inconvenience, when I see useless pieces of flesh and bone slapping nature in the face and not getting more than a mild little slap in return, and then when I see the biggest, most useful man I have ever known paying as a penalty his life's work—oh Lord—that's rot! I have some hymn singing ancestors myself, and they left me a tendency to want to believe in something or other, so I had fine notions about the economy of nature—poetry of science. But this makes rather a joke of that, too—don't you think?" He paused, and Georgia could see the hot beating in his temples and his throat. And then he added, with a quiet more unanswerable than the passion had been: "So the beautiful thing about having no gods at all is that you're so fixed you have no gods to lose."

The telephone rang then, and there was a sharp fire of questions ending with, "Yes—I'll see her before nine to-night." He hung up the receiver and sat there a minute in deep thought, seeming to concentrate his whole being upon this patient now commanding him. And then he turned to Hastings with something about the boy out at the university, telling him at the last not to worry about the financial end of it, that he liked to do things for students who amounted to something.

Professor Hastings was smiling a little as he walked down the corridor. He wondered why Dr. Parkman cared anything about slaving for so senseless and unsatisfying a world.

He loved the doctor for his inconsistencies.



CHAPTER XXII

A BLIND MAN'S TWILIGHT

"Ready?"

"All ready."

"Then, one—two—three—we're off!" A laugh and a scamper and one grand rush down to the back fence. "You go too fast," she laughed, gasping for breath.

"And you're not steady. You jerk."

"But this was a fine straight row. I can steer it just right when you don't push too hard. Now—back."

They always had a great deal of fun cutting the grass. Ernestine used to wish the grass had to be cut every day.

But Karl did not seem to be enjoying it as much as usual to-day. "I'm going to desert you," he said, after a little while.

"Lazy man!"

"Yes—lazy good for nothing man—leaves all the work for his wife."

She looked at him sharply. His voice sounded very tired. "I'll be in in just a few minutes, dear," she said.

She did not go with him. She knew Karl liked to find his own way just as much as he could. She understood far too well to do any unnecessary "helping."

But she stood there and looked after him—watched him with deep pain in her eyes. He stooped a little, and of course he walked slowly, and uncertainly. All that happy spring and assurance had gone from his walk.

She walked down to the rear of the yard, stood there leaning against the back fence. She had dropped more than one tear over that back fence.

She too had lost something during the summer. Struggle had sapped up some of the wine of youth. Her face was thinner, but that was not the vital difference. The real change lay in the determination with which she had learned to set her jaw, the defiance with which she held her head, and the wistfulness, the pleading, with which her eyes seemed to be looking out into the future. The combination of things about her was a strange one.

She looked to the west; the sun was low, the clouds very beautiful. For the minute she seemed to relax:—beauty always rested her. And then, with a sharp closing of her eyes, a bitter little shake of her head, she turned away. She could not look at beautiful things now without the consciousness that Karl could not see them.

They always sat together in the library that hour before dinner—"our hour" they had come to call it. She wondered, with a hot rush of tears, if they did not care for it because it marked the close of another day. She turned to the house, kicking the newly cut grass with her foot, walking slowly. She was waiting for something—fighting for it. Karl needed her to-night, needed courage and cheer.

She came so quietly, or else he was so deep in thought, that he did not hear her. For a minute she stood there in the library door.

He was sitting in his Morris chair, his hands upon the arms of it, his head leaning back. His eyes were closed, one could not tell in that moment that he was blind, but it was more than the dimness, the blankness in his eyes, more than scarred eyeballs, made for the change in Karl's face. He and life did not dwell together as they had once; a freedom and a gladness and a sureness had gone. The loss of those things meant the loss of something fundamentally Karl. And the sadness—and the longing—and the marks of struggle which the light of courage could not hide!

She choked a little, and he heard her, and held out his hand, with a smile. It was the smile which came closest to bridging the change. He was very close to being Karl when he smiled at her like that.

She sat down on the low seat beside him, as was their fashion. "Lazy man,"—brushing his hand tenderly with her lips—"wouldn't help his wife cut the grass!"

She wondered, as they sat there in silence, how many lovers had loved that hour. It seemed mellowed with the dreams it had held from the first of time. Ever since the world was very young, children of love had crept into the twilight hour and claimed it as their own. Perhaps the lovers of to-day love it because unto it has been committed the soul of all love's yesterdays.

She and Karl had loved it from the very first: in those days when they were upon the sea, those supreme days of uncomprehended happiness. They sat in the twilight then and watched day withdraw and night spread itself over the waters. They loved the mystery of it, for it was one with the mystery of their love; they loved it for reasons to be told only in great silences, knowing unreasoningly, that they were most close together then.

And after that they came to love the twilight for the things it bequeathed them. "Don't you remember," he would say, "we left it just as the sun was setting. Aren't you glad we can remember it so?" It was as if their love could take unto itself most readily that which came to it in the mystic hour of closing day.

And when they returned, during that first year of joy in their work, they loved the hour of transition as an hour of rest. Their day's work was done; in the evening they would study or read or in some way occupy themselves, but because they had worked all through the day they could rest for a short time in the twilight. And they would tell of what they had done; of what they hoped to do; if there had been discouragements they would tell of them, and with the telling they would draw away. In the light of closing day the future's picture was unblurred. They loved their hour then as true workers love it; it was good to sink with the day to the half lights of rest and peace.

Now it was all different, but they clung to their love for it still. Through the heart of the day, during those hours which from his early boyhood had been to him working hours, this removal from life brought to the man a poignancy of realisation which beat with undiminishing force against the wall of his endurance. It was when he finished his breakfast and the day's work would naturally begin that it came home to him the hardest. They would go into the library, and Ernestine would read to him—how she delved into the whole storehouse of literature for things to hold him best—and how great her joy when she found something to make the day pass a little less hard than was the day's wont! He would listen to her, loving her voice, and trying to bring his mind to what she read, but all the while his thoughts reaching out to what he would be doing if his life as worker were not blotted out. The call of his work tormented him all through the day, and the twilight was the time most bearable because it was an hour which had never been filled with the things of his work. In that short hour he sometimes, in slight measure found, if not peace, cessation from struggle. "This is what I would be doing now," he told himself, and with that, when the day had not drawn too heavily upon him, he could rest a little, perhaps, in some rare moments, almost forget.

But to-night the spell of the hour was passing him by. Ernestine saw that in the restless way his hand moved away from hers, the nervous little cough, the fretted shaking of the head. She understood why it was; the fall quarter at the university opened that day. It would have marked the beginning of his new year's work. Very quietly she wiped the tears from her cheek. She tried never to let Karl know that they were there.

His head had fallen to his hand, and she moved closer to him and laid her face against the sleeve of his coat. She did not say anything, she did not touch him, or wind her arm, as she loved to do, about his neck. She had come to understand so well, and perhaps the greatest triumph of her love was in knowing when to say nothing at all.

At last he raised his head. His voice, like his face, was tensely drawn. "Ernestine, don't bother to stay. Probably you want to be seeing about dinner, and I—I don't feel like talking."

That too she understood. She only laid her hand for the moment upon his hair. Then: "Call me, dear, if you want me," and she slipped away, and in a little nook under the stairs sat looking out into their strange future with wondering, beseeching eyes—seeking passionately better resources, a more sustaining strength.

Left alone the man sat very still, his hands holding tight the arm of the chair. The tide of despair was coming in, was washing over the sands of resignation, beating against the rocks of courage. Many times before it had come in, but there was something overwhelming in its volume to-night. It beat hard against the rocks. Was it within its power to loosen and carry them away? Carry them out with itself to be gone for all time?

He rose and felt his way to the window. He pressed his hot forehead against the pane. Outside was the dying light of day, but the glare of noonday, the quiet light of evening, the black of the night, were all one to him now. Was it going to be so with his mind, his spirit? Would all that other light, light of the mind and soul, be gulped into this black monotone, this nothingness?

He had heard of the beautiful spirit of the blind, of the mastery of fate achieved, the things they were able, in spite of it all, to gain from life. Ernestine had read him some of that; he had been glad to hear it, but it had not moved him much. Most of those people had been blind for a long time. He too, in the course of ten or twenty years, when the best of his life was gone, would become accustomed to groping his way about, reading from those books, and having other people tell him how things looked. But so long as he remained himself at all how accustom himself to doing without his work? In the records and stories of the blind, it seemed if they had a work it was something which they could continue. But with him, the work which made his life was gone.

Over there was the university. It had been a busy day at the university—old faces and new faces, all the exuberance of a new start, the enthusiasm for a clean slate—students anxious to make some particular class—how well he knew it all! Who was in his laboratory? Who working with his old things? To whom was coming the joy he had thought would be his? What man of all the world's men would achieve the things he had believed would crown his own life?

Some day Ernestine would read it to him. He had made her promise to do that, if it came. He would see it all—just how it had been worked out, and the momentary joy of the revelation would sweep him back into it and he would forget how completely it was a thing apart from him. And then Ernestine would ask him if he wanted his chair a little higher or lower, or whether she should shut the window; and he would pick up one of his embossed books and try to read something, and he would know, as he had never known before, how the great world which did things was going right on without him.

There were a few little petitions he sent out every once in a while. "I want to remain a man! I want to keep my nerve. I don't want to whine. I don't want to get sorry for myself. For God's sake help me to be a good fellow—a half way decent sort of chap!"

And he had not tried in vain. His success, as to exteriors, had been good. Mrs. McCormick said it was indeed surprising how well one could get along without one's sight.

But within himself he had not gone far. Ernestine knew something of that—though he had tried his best with Ernestine, and Parkman knew, for Parkman had a way of knowing everything.

And yet they did not know it all. The waking up in the night and knowing it would not be any more light in the morning! Hearing the clock strike four or five, and thinking that in a little while he would be getting up and going to work, only to remember he would never be going to work in that old way again! The waking in the morning feeling like his old self, strength within him, his mind beseeching him to start in! No man had ever suffered with the craving for strong drink as he suffered for the work taken from him.

He had, by what grit he could summon, gone along for five months. But ahead were five years, ten years, thirty years, perhaps, and what of them? Each day was a struggle; the living of each day a triumph. Through thousands of days should it be the same?

It was the future which took hold of him then—smothered him. He went down before the vision of those unlived days, the grim vision of those relentless, inevitable days, standing there waiting to be lived. It was desolation. The surrender of a strong man who had tried to the uttermost.

Whether it was because he upset a chair, whether she heard him groan, or whether she just knew in that way of hers that it was time for her to be there, he did not know. But he felt her at the door, and held out beseeching arms.

He crushed her to him very close. He wanted to bring her more close than she had ever come before. For he needed her as he had not needed her until this hour. "Ernestine! Ernestine!"—the sob in his voice was not to be denied—"What am I going to do?"

"Karl,"—after her moment of passionate silence—"tell me this. Doesn't it get any better? One bit easier?"

"No!"—that would have no denying; and then: "Oh but I'm the brute to talk to you like this, after you've been"—again he swept her into his arms—"what you have been to me this summer."

She guided him to a chair and knelt beside him. She held his hand for a minute as the mother holds the hand of the child in pain. And then she began, her voice tender, but quietly determined: "Karl dear—let's be honest. Let's not do so much pretending with each other. For just this once let's look it right in the face. I want to understand—oh how I want to! What's the very worst of it, dear? Is it—the work?"

"Yes!"—the word leaped out as though let loose from a long bondage. "Ernestine—no one but a man can quite see that. What is a man without a man's work? What is there for him to do but sit around in namby-pamby fashion and be fussed over and coddled and cheered up! Lord"—he threw away her hands and turned his face from her—"I'd rather be dead!"

Her utter silence recalled him to a sense of how she must be hurt. Could he have looked into her eyes just then he would never have ceased to regret those words.

There was contrition in his face as he turned back. He reached out for her hands—those faithful, loving hands he had thrust away. For just a minute she did not give them, but that was only for the minute—so quick was she to forgive, so eager to understand.

"Forget that, sweetheart—quick. I didn't know what I was saying. Why, liebchen—it's only you makes it bearable at all. If I did not have you I should—choose the other way."

"Karl!"—in an instant clinging to him wildly—"you hadn't thought—you couldn't think—"

"Oh, sweetheart—you've misunderstood. Now, dearie—don't—don't make me feel I've made you cry. All I meant, Ernestine, was that without you it would be so utterly unbearable."

He stroked her hair until she was quiet. "Why, liebchen—do you think anything under heaven could be so bad that I should want to leave you?"

"I should hope I had not failed—quite that completely," she whispered brokenly.

"Failed?—You? Come up here a little closer and I'll try to tell you just how far you've come from having failed."

At first he could tell her best in the passionate kiss, the gentle stroking of her face, the tenderness with which his hands rested upon her eyes. And then words added a little. "Everything, liebchen; everything of joy and comfort and beauty and light—light, sweetheart—everything of light and hope and consolation that comes to me now is through you. You've done more than I would have believed in human power. You have actually made me forget, and can you fancy how supreme a thing it is to make a man forget that he is blind? You've put the beautiful things before me in their most beautiful way. Do you suppose that alone, or with any one else, I could see any beauty in anything? You've made me laugh! How did you ever do that—you wonderful little Ernestine? And, sweetheart, you've helped me with my self-respect. You've saved me in a thousand little ways from the humiliations of being blind. Why you actually must have some idea of what it is like yourself!"

"I have, Karl. I have imagined and thought about it and tried to—well, just trained myself, until I believe I do know something of what it is like."

"You love me!" he murmured, carried with that from despair to exultation.

"But if you could only know how much."

"I do know. I do know, dear. I wish that all the world—I'd hate to have them know, for it's just ours—but for the sake of faltering faith they ought to know what you've been to me this summer."

"Then, Karl,"—this after one of their precious silences—"I want to ask you something. It is hard to say it just right, but I'll try. You know that I love you—that we have one of those supreme loves which come at rare times—perhaps for the sake of what you call faltering faith. But, Karl—this will sound hard—but after all, doesn't it fail? Fail of being supreme? Doesn't it fail if it is not—satisfying? I don't mean that it should make up to one for such a thing as being blind, but if in spite of love like ours life seems unbearable to you without your work—why then, dear, doesn't it fail?"

He was long in answering, and then he only said, slowly: "I see. I see how you have reasoned it out. I wonder if I can make you understand?"

"Ernestine,"—the old enthusiasm had kindled in his face with the summoning of the thoughts—"no painter or sculptor ever loved his work more than I loved mine. And I had that same kind of joy in it; that delight in it as a beautiful thing to achieve. That may seem strange to you. But the working out of something I was able to do brought me the same delight the working out of a picture brings to you. Dear, it was my very soul. And so, instead of there being two forces in my life after I had you, it was just the one big thing. You made me bigger and because I was bigger I wanted to do bigger things. Don't you see that?"

She held his hand a little more closely in response. He knew that she understood.

"Don't think I have given up—why of course I haven't. I will adjust myself in a little time—do what there is for me to do. I am going to see immediately about a secretary, a stenographer—no, Ernestine, I don't want you to do that. It's merely routine work, and I want you to do your own work. One of us must do the work it was intended we should. I could have gone on with some lecture work at the university, but I—this year I couldn't quite do that. I'll be more used to handling myself by next year, have myself better in hand in every way. I couldn't quite stand the smell from the laboratory just now. This year I shall work on those books I've told you about; just class-room books—I never could write anything that would be literature—I'm not built for that; but these things will be useful, I've felt the need of something of the sort in my own classes. I'll always make a living, Ernestine—don't you ever worry about that! And the world won't know—why should we let it know we're not satisfied? But I can't hide from you that it is the other, the creative work—the—oh, I tell you, Ernestine, the fellows up there in the far north don't have all the fun! It may be great to push one's way through icebergs—but I know something that is greater than that! They say there is a joy in standing where no man ever stood before, and I can see that, for I too have stood where no man ever stood before! But I'm ahead of them—mine's the greater joy—for I knew that my territory was worth something—that the world would follow where I had led!"—The old force, fire, joyous enthusiasm had bounded into his voice. But it died away, and it was with a settling to sadness he said, "You see, little girl, if there was a wonderful picture you had conceived—your masterpiece, something you had reason to feel would stand as one of the world's great pictures, if you had begun on it, were in the heat of it, and then had to give it up, it would not quite satisfy you, would it, dear, to settle down and write some textbooks on art?"

"Karl—it's I who have been blind! I tried so hard to understand—but I—oh, Karl—can't we do something? Can't we do something about it?"

"I was selfish to tell you—but it is good to have you understand."

But she had not let go that idea of something being done. "Karl, couldn't you go on with it? Isn't there some way? Can't we find a way?"

He shook his head. "I have thought of it by the hour—gone over every side of it. But work like that takes a man's whole being. It takes more than mere eyes and hands—more than just mind. You must have the spirit right for it—all things must work together. It's not the sort of work to do under a handicap. God knows I'd start in if I could see my way—but neither the world nor myself would have anything to gain. Some one would have to be eyes for me—and so much more than eyes. It's all in how things look, dear—their appearance tells the story. An assistant could tell me what he saw—but he could not bring to me what would be conveyed if I saw it myself. All that was individual in my work would be gone. Minds do not work together like that. I should be too much in the dark," he concluded, sadly.

For a long time her head was on his shoulder. She was giving him of that silent sympathy which came with an eternal freshness from her heart.

"We'll manage pretty well," he went on, in a lighter tone which did not quite deceive her. "Our life is not going to be one long spell of moping. It's time now for the year's work to begin. You must get at your pictures, and I'll get at the books. Oh, I'll get interested in them, all right—and oh, liebchen"—with a tenderness which swept all else aside—"I have you!"



CHAPTER XXIII

HER VISION

Some of the university people came over that night to see Karl. Ernestine was glad of that, for she had been dreading the evening. Their talk of the afternoon had made it more clear and more hard than it had ever been before.

Her mothering instinct had been supreme that summer. It had dominated her so completely as to blur slightly the clearness of her intellectual vision. To be doing things for him, making him as comfortable as possible, to find occupation for him as one does for the convalescent, to hover about him, showering him with manifestations of her love and woman's protectiveness—it had stirred the mother in her, and in the depths of her sorrow there had been a sublime joy.

Now she could not see her way ahead. It was her constant doing things to "make it up to him" had made the summer bearable at all. With the clearing of her vision her sustaining power seemed taken from her.

"And how has it gone with you this summer?" Professor Hastings asked, holding both of her hands for a minute in fatherly fashion as she met him in the hall.

He scarcely heard her reply, for the thought came to him: "If he could only see her now!"

It was her pride and her wistfulness, her courage and her appeal, the union of defiance and tenderness which held one strangely in the face of Ernestine. She was as the figure of love standing there wounded but unvanquished before the blows of fate.

"Professor Hastings has come to see you, Karl," she said, as they entered the library; and as he rose she laid her hand very gently upon his arm, a touch which seemed more like an unconscious little movement of affection than an assistance.

"Good for Hastings!" said Karl, with genuine heartiness.

"And have a good many thought waves from me come to you this summer?" he asked, shaking Karl's hand with a warmth which conveyed the things he left unsaid.

"Yes, they've come," Karl replied. "Oh, we knew our friends were with us,"—a little hastily. "But we've had a pretty good summer—haven't we, Ernestine?" turning his face to her.

"In many ways it has been a delightful summer,"—her voice now had that blending of defiance and appeal, and as she looked at her husband and smiled it flashed through Professor Hastings' mind—"He knew she did that!"

"You see,"—after they were seated—"I was really very uneducated. Isn't it surprising, Hastings, how much some of us don't know? Now what do you know about the history of art? Could you pass a sophomore examination in it? Well, I couldn't until Ernestine began coaching me up this summer. Now I'm quite fit to appear before women's clubs as a lecturer on art. Literature, too, I'm getting on with; I'm getting acquainted with all the Swedes and the Irishmen and the Poles who ever put pen to paper."

"Karl," she protested—"Swedes and Irishmen and Poles!"

"Isn't that what they are?" he demanded, innocently.

"Well they're not exactly a lot of immigrants."

"Yes they are; immigrants into the domain of my—shall I say intellectuality?"

They laughed a little, and there was a moment's pause. "Tell me about school," he said, abruptly, his voice all changed.

Professor Hastings felt the censorship of Ernestine's eyes upon him as he talked; they travelled with a frightened eagerness from the face of the man who spoke to him who listened. He could see them deepen as they touched dangerous ground, and he wondered how she could go on living with that intensity of feeling.

"Beason is back," he said, in telling of the returnings and the changes.

"Beason!"—Dr. Hubers' voice rang out charged with a significance the older man could not understand. "You say Beason is back?"—the voice then was as if something had broken.

"Yes, it was unexpected. He had thought he would be West this year, but things turned out better than he had expected."

"Yes, he told me—in April, that he would be West this year." As he sank back, his face in repose, Professor Hastings saw something of what the summer had done.

Ernestine's eyes were upon him, a little reproachful, and beseeching. But before he could think of anything redeeming to say two other university men had been admitted.

It was hard at first. Dr. Hubers did not rouse himself to more than the merest conventionality, and all the rest of it was left to his wife, who, however, rose to the situation with a superb graciousness. Finally they touched a topic which roused Karl. His mind reached out to it with his old eagerness and virility, and they were soon in the heat of one of those discussions which wage when men of active mind and kindred interest are brought together.

Ernestine sat for a little time listening to them, grateful for the relaxation of the tension, more grateful still for this touch of Karl's old-time self. But following upon that the very consciousness that they saw the real Karl so seldom now brought added pain. What would the future hold? What could it hold? Must he not go farther and farther from this real self as he adjusted himself more and more fully to the new order of things?

Watching him then, as he talked and listened, she could appreciate anew what Karl's eyes had meant to his personality. It almost broke her heart to see him lean forward and look in that half-eager, half-fretted way toward the man who was speaking, as though his blindness were a barrier between their minds, a barrier he instinctively tried to beat down.

She wanted to get away, and she felt they would get along better now without her. So she left them, laughingly, to their cigars and their discussion.

She wandered about the house listlessly, mechanically doing a few things here and there. And then, still aimlessly, she went up to her studio. She sat down on the floor, leaning her head against the couch. Just then she looked like a very tired, disappointed child.

And it was with something of a child's simplicity she saw things then. Was it right to treat Karl that way—Karl who was so great and good—could do such big things? Was it fair or right that Karl should be unhappy—Karl who did so much for other people, and who had all this sweetness and tenderness with the greatness?

What could she do for Karl? She loved him enough to lay down her life for him. Then was there not some way she could use her life to make things better for him?

And so she sat there, her thoughts brooding over him, too tired for anything but very simple thinking, too worn for passion, but filled with the sadness of a grieving child. It was after she had been looking straight at it for a long time that she realised she Was looking at a picture on her easel.

Dimly, uncaringly, she knew what the picture was. But she was thinking only of Karl. It was a long time before her mind really followed her eyes to the picture.

It was a sketch of a woman's face. She remembered what a splendid model she had had for it. And then suddenly her mind went full upon it; her whole bearing changed; she leaned forward with a passionate intentness.

Unsatisfied longing, disappointed motherhood, deep, deep things stirred only to be denied! Yes, the model had been a good one, but it was from her own soul the life things in that face had come.

It brought them all back now—all those things she had put into it. A great wave of passion and yearning swept through her;—new questionings, sorrow touched with resentment, longing mingled with defiance. Why could not this have gone right with them? What it would have meant to Karl in these days!—sustained, comforted, kept strong.

The pain of those first days was translated by the deeper understanding of these. Her eyes were very deep, about her mouth an infinite yearning as she asked some of those questions for which God had no answer.

But there was something about the picture she did not like. She looked at it with a growing dissatisfaction. And then she saw what it was. The woman was sinking to melancholy. She bowed under the hand of fate. She did not know why, this night of all others, she should resent that. What did she want? What could she expect?

She stirred restlessly under the dissatisfaction. It seemed too much fate's triumph to leave it like this. Not this surrender, but a little of the Spartan, a touch of sternness, a little defiance in the hunger, an understanding—that was it!—a submission in which there was the dignity of understanding. Ah—here it was!—a knowing that thousands had endured and must endure, but as an echo from the Stoics—"Well?"

The idea fascinated her—swept through her with a strange, wild passion. She scarcely knew what she was doing, when, after a long time of looking at the picture, she began getting out her things. Her face had wholly changed. She too had now the understanding, stern, all-comprehending—"Well?"—for fate.

She could work! That was the thing remained. She would not bow down under it and submit. She would work! She would erect something to stand for their love—something so great, so universal and eternal that it would make up for all taken away. She would crystallise their lives into something so big and supreme that Karl himself, feeling, understanding that which he could not see, would come at the end into all the satisfaction of the victor! Could she do greater things for him than that?

She glowed under the idea. It filled, thrilled, intoxicated her. And she could do it! As she saw that a few master strokes were visualising her idea she came into greater consciousness of her power than she had ever had before.

It all flowed into big new impetus for her work. A year before she had wanted to work because she was so happy, now with a fierce passion she turned to her work as the thing to make it right for their lives. Out of all this she would rise to so great an understanding, so supreme a power that they too could hurl their defiant—"Well?"—at the fate which had believed them conquered. In the glow and the passion and the exaltation of it she felt that nothing in the world, no trick of fate, no onslaught of God or man, could keep her from the work that was hers. She had a vision of hosts of men, all powers of fate, marching against her, and she, unfaltering, serene, confident, just doing her work! It was one of the perfect moments of the divine intoxication.

It was in the very glow of it that the strange thing happened. The lights from her ruby, caught in a shaft of light, blurred her vision for an instant, and in that same instant, as if borne with the lights of the stone, there penetrated her glowing, exuberant mood—quick, piercing, like an arrow shot in with strong, true hand—"He loves his work just like this. You know now. You understand."

Her mood fell away like a pricked bubble. The divine glow, that passionate throbbing of conscious power, made way for the comprehension of that thing shot in upon her like a shaft.—"He loves his work just like this. You know now. You understand."

She had been standing, and she sank to a chair. Like all great changes it sapped up strength. The blood had cooled too suddenly, and she was weak and trembling—but, oh, how she understood! He himself did not understand it as she understood it now.

Pushing upon him—dominating him—clamouring—crowding for outlet when outlet had been closed—gathering, growing, and unable to find its valve of escape—why it would crowd upon him—kill him! Beat it down? But it was the deathless in him. With human strength put out a fire that was divine?

She covered her face with her hands to shut it out. But she could not shut it out; it was there—a thing to be faced, not evaded—a thing which would grow, not draw away. And she loved him so! In this moment of perfect understanding, this divine camaraderie of the soul—knowing that they were touched with the same touch—drew from a common fount—she felt within her a love for him, an understanding, which all of the centuries behind her, the eternity out of which she had come—had gone to make.

And then, grim, stern, she put her intellect upon it. She went over everything he had said that afternoon. Each thought of it opened up new channels, and she followed them all to their uttermost. And in that getting of it in hand there was more than insight, knowledge, conviction. There was a complete sensing of the truth, a comprehending of things just without the pale of reason.

Her face pale, her eyes looking into that far distance, she sat there for more than an hour, oblivious for the first time since his blindness to the thought that Karl might be needing her, lost to all conventional instincts as hostess. Hard and fast the thoughts beat upon her, and then at last in the wake of those thoughts, out beyond, there was born a great light. It staggered her at first; it seemed a light too great for human mind to bear. But time passed, and the light burned on, steady, fixed, not to pass away. And in that momentous hour which words are quite powerless to record, something was buried, and something born.



CHAPTER XXIV

LOVE CHALLENGES FATE

The doctor hung up the receiver slowly and with meditation. And when he turned from the telephone his thoughts did not leave the channel to which it had directed them. What was it Mrs. Hubers wanted? Why was she coming to the office at four that afternoon? Something in her voice made him wonder.

He had offered to go out, but she preferred coming to the office. Evidently then she wished to see him alone; and she had specified that she come when he could give her the most time. Then there was something to talk over. He had asked for Karl, and she answered, cheerfully, that he was well. "And you?" he pursued, and she had laughed with that—an underlying significance in that laugh perplexed him as he recalled it, and had answered buoyantly: "I? Oh, splendid!"

It did not leave his mind all day; he thought about it a great deal as he drove his car from place to place. It even came to him in the operating room, and it was not usual for anything to intrude there.

He reached the office a few minutes ahead of the hour, but she was waiting for him. She rose as she saw him at the door and took an eager step forward. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes very bright, and her smile, as she held out her hand, had that same quality as her voice of the morning.

She was so far removed from usual things that she resorted to no conventional pleasantries after they had entered the doctor's inner office, and she waited for him to attend to a few little things before giving her his attention. He knew by the way her eyes followed him about that she was eager to begin, and while there was a little timidity about her it seemed just a timidity of manner, of things exterior, while back of that he felt the force of her poise.

He had never seen her so beautiful. She was wearing a brown velvet suit, a golden brown like some of the glints in her hair and some of the lights in her eyes. Her eyes, too, held that something which puzzled him. It was a windy day, and her hair was a little disarranged, which made her look very young, and her veil was thrown back from her face just right to make a frame for it. Why could not all women manage those big veils the way some women did, he wondered.

He sat down in the chair before his desk, and swung it around facing her. Then he waited for her to speak.

That little timidity was upon her for the second, but she broke through it, seeming to shake it off with a little shake of her head. "Dr. Parkman," she said—her voice was low and well controlled—"I have come to you because I want you to help me."

He liked that. Very few people came out with the truth at the start that way.

"I wonder if you know," she went on, looking at him with a very sweet seriousness, "that Karl is very unhappy?"

His face showed that that was unexpected. "Why, yes," he assented, "I know that his heart has not been as philosophical as some of his words; but"—gently—"what can you expect?"

She did not answer that, but pondered something a minute. "Dr. Parkman," she began abruptly, "just why do you think it is Karl cannot go on with his work? I do not mean his lectures, but his own work in the laboratory, the research?"

Again he showed that she was surprising him. "Why surely you understand that. It is self-evident, is it not? He cannot do his laboratory work because he has lost his eyes."

"Eyes—yes. But the eye is only an instrument; he has not lost his brain." The flush in her cheeks deepened. Her eyes met his in challenge. Her voice on that had been very firm.

He was quick to read beyond the words. "You are asking, intending to ask, why he could not go on, working through some assistant?"

"I want to know just what is your idea of why he cannot. All the things of mind and temperament—things which make him Karl—are there as before. Are we not letting a very little thing hold us back?"—there was much repression now, as though she must hold herself in check, and wait.

"I've thought about it too!" he exclaimed. "Heaven knows I've tried to see it that way. But my conclusion has always been like Karl's: the handicap would be too great."

"Why?" she asked calmly.

"Why? Why—because," he replied, almost impatiently, and then laughed a little at his woman's reason.

"I'll tell you why!"—her eyes deepening. "I'll tell you the secret of your conclusion. You concluded he could not go on with his work just because no assistant could be in close enough touch with Karl to make clear the things he saw."

He thought a minute. Then, "That's about it," he answered briefly.

"You concluded that two men's brains could not work together in close enough harmony for one man's eyes to fit the other man's brain."

"You put it very clearly," he assented.

She paused, as though to be very sure of herself here. "Then, doctor, looking a little farther into it, one sees something else. If there were some one close enough to Karl to bring to his brain, through some other medium than eyes, the things the eyes would naturally carry; if there were some one close enough to make things just as plain as though Karl were seeing them himself, then"—her voice gathered in intensity—"despite the loss of his eyes, he could go right on with his work."

"Um—well, yes, if such an impossible thing were possible."

"But it is possible! Oh if I can only make you see this now! Doctor, don't you see it? I am closer to him than any one in the world! I am the one to take up his work!"

He pushed back his chair and sat staring at her speechlessly.

"Dr. Parkman," she began—and it seemed now that he had never known her at all before—"most of the biggest things ever proposed in this world have sounded very ridiculous to the people who first heard of them. The unprecedented has usually been called the impossible. Now I ask you to do just one thing. Don't hold my idea at arm's length as an impossibility. Look it straight in the face without prejudice. Who would do more for Karl than any one else on earth? Who is closer to him than any one else in the world? Who can make him see without seeing?—yet, know without knowing? Dr. Parkman,"—voice eager, eyes very tender—"is there any question in your mind as to who can come closest to Karl?"

"But—but—" he gasped.

"I know," she hastened—"much to talk over; so many things to overcome. But won't you be very fair to me and look at it first as a whole? The men in Karl's laboratory know more about science than I do. But they do not know as much about Karl. They have the science and I have the spirit. I can get the science but they could never get the spirit. After all, isn't there some meaning in that old phrase 'a labour of love'? Doctor"—her smile made it so much clearer than her words—"did you ever hear of knowledge and skill working a miracle? Do you know anything save love which can do the impossible?"

He did not speak at once. He did not find it easy to answer words like that. "But, my dear Mrs. Hubers," he finally began—"you are simply assuming—"

"Yes,"—and the tenderness leaped suddenly to passion and the passion intensified to sternness—"I am simply assuming that it can be done, and through obstacle and argument, from now until the end of my life, I am going on assuming that very thing, and furthermore, Dr. Parkman,"—relaxing a little and smiling at him under standingly—"just as soon as the light has fully dawned upon you, you are going to begin assuming that, and you are the very man—oh, I know—to keep on assuming it in the face of all the obstacles which the University of Chicago—yes, and all creation—may succeed in piling up. There is one thing on which you and I are going to stand very firmly together. That thing,"—with the deep quiet of finality—"is that Karl shall go on with his work."

Dr. Parkman had never been handled that way before; perhaps it was its newness which fascinated him; at any rate he seemed unable to say the things he felt he should be saying.

"Dr. Parkman, the only weak people in this world are the people who sit down and say that things are impossible. The only big people are the people who stand up and declare in the face of whatsoever comes that nothing is impossible. For Karl there is some excuse; the shock has been too great—his blindness has shut him in. But you and I are out in the light of day, doctor, and I say that you and I have been weaklings long enough."

He had never been called a weakling before—he had never thought to be called a weakling, but the strangeness of that was less strange than something in her eyes, her voice, her spirit, which seemed drawing him on.

"Karl has lost his eyes. Has he lost his brain—any of those things which make him Karl? All that has been taken away is the channel of communication. I am not presuming to be his brain. All I ask is to carry things to the brain. Why, doctor,—I'm ashamed, mortified—that we hadn't thought of it before!"

"But—how?" he finally asked, weakly enough.

"I will go into Karl's laboratory and learn how to work—all that part of it I want you to arrange for me. After all, I have a good foundation. I think I told you about my father, and how hard he tried to make a scientist of me? And it was queer about my laboratory work. It was always easy for me. I could see it, all right—enough my father's child for that, but you see my working enthusiasm and ambition were given to other things. Now I'll make things within me join forces, for I will love the work now, because of what it can do for Karl. I need to be trained how to work, how to observe, and above all else learn to tell exactly what I see. I shall strive to become a perfectly constructed instrument—that's all. And I will be better than the usual laboratory assistant, for not having any ideas of my own I will not intrude my individuality upon Karl—to blur his vision. I shall not try to deduce—and mislead him with my wrong conclusions. I shall simply see. A man who knew more about it might not be able to separate what he saw from what he thought—and that would be standing between Karl and the facts."