He was looking at her strangely. "And your own work—what would be happening to it, if you were to do—this?"

"I have given my own work up," she said, and she said it so simply that it might have seemed a very simply matter.

"You can't do that," he met her, sharply.

"Yes,"—slowly—"I can. I love it, but I love Karl more. If I have my work he cannot have his, and Karl has been deprived of his eyes—he is giving up the sunlight—the stars—the face he loves—many things. I thought it all out last night, and the very simple justice of it is that Karl is the one to have his work."

She was dwelling upon it,—a wonderful tenderness lighting her face; for the minute she had forgotten him.

Then suddenly she came sharply back to the practical, brought herself ruthlessly back to it, as if fearing it was her practicality he would question. "Besides, Karl's work is the more important. Nobody is going to die for a water colour or an oil painting; people are dying every day for the things Karl can give. But, doctor,"—far too feminine not to press the advantage—"if I can do that, don't you think you can afford to break through your conservatism and—you will, doctor, won't you?"

But Dr. Parkman had wheeled his chair about so that she could not see his face. His eyes had grown a little dim.

"You see, doctor,"—gently,—"what I am going to give to it? Not only the things any one else could give, but all my love for Karl, and added to that all those things within myself which have heretofore been poured into my own work. I can paint, doctor, you and I know that, and I think you know something of how I love it. Something inside of me has always been given to it—a great big something for which there is no name. Now I am going to just force all that into a new channel, and don't you see how much there will be to give? And in practical ways too I can make my own work count. I know how to use my hands—and there isn't a laboratory assistant in the whole University of Chicago knows as much about colour as I do!"—she smiled like a pleased child.

He looked at her then—a long look. He had forgotten the moisture in his eyes,—he did not mind. And it was many years since any one had seen upon Dr. Parkman's face the look which Ernestine saw there now.

"Isn't it strange, doctor," she went on, after a pause, "how we think we understand, and then suddenly awake to find we have not been understanding at all? Karl and I had a long talk yesterday, and in that talk he seemed able to let me right into it all. All summer long I did my best, but I see now I had not been understanding. And understanding as I do now—caring as I care—do you think I can sit quietly by and see Karl make himself over to fit this miserable situation? Do you think I am going to help him adjust himself to giving up the great thing in him? No—he is not going to accept it! I tell you Karl is to be Karl—he is to do Karl's work—and find Karl's place. Why I tell you, Dr. Parkman, I will not have it any other way!"

It was a passionate tyranny of the spirit over which caution of mind seemed unable to prevail. His reason warned him—I cannot see how this and this and that are to be done, but the soul in her voice seemed drawing him to a light out beyond the darkness.

"Doctor,"—her eyes glowing with a tender pride—"think of it! Think of Karl doing his work in spite of his blindness! Won't it stand as one of the greatest things in the whole history of science?"

He nodded, the light of enthusiasm growing more steady in his own eye.

"But I have not finished telling you. After our talk yesterday it seemed to me I could not go on at all. I didn't know what to do. In the evening I was up in my studio—"—she paused, striving to formulate it,—"No, I see I can't tell it, but suddenly things came to me, and, doctor, I understand it now better than Karl understands it himself."

He felt the things which she did not say; indeed through it all it was the unspoken drew him most irresistibly.

"I'll not try to tell you how it all worked itself out, but I saw things very clearly then, and all the facts and all the reason and all the logic in the world could not make me believe I did not see the truth. My idea of taking it up myself, of my being the one to bring Karl back to his work, seemed to come to me like some great divine light. I suppose," she concluded, simply, "that it was what you would call a moment of inspiration."

She leaned her head back as though very tired, but smiling a little. He did not speak; he had too much the understanding heart to intrude upon the things shining from her face.

"I could do good work, doctor. I've always felt it, and I have done just enough to justify me in knowing it. I don't believe any one ever loved his work more than I love mine, and last night when I saw things so clearly I saw how the longing for it would come to me—oh, I know. Don't think I do not know. But something will sustain me; something will keep my courage high, and that something is the look there will be on Karl's face when I tell him what I have done. You see we will not tell Karl at first; we will keep it a great secret. He will know I am working hard, but will think it is my own work. If we told him now he would say it was impossible. His blindness, the helplessness that goes with it, has taken away some of his confidence, and he would say it could not be done. But what will he say,"—she laughed, almost gleefully—"when he finds I have gone ahead and made myself ready for him? When you tell him I can do it—and the laboratory men tell him so? He will try it then, just out of gratitude to me. Oh, it will not go very well at first. It is going to take practice—days and weeks and months of it—to learn how to work together. But, little by little, he will gain confidence in himself and in me, he will begin getting back his grip—enthusiasm—all the things of the old-time Karl, and then some day when we have had a little success about something he will burst forth—'By Jove—Ernestine—I believe we can make it go!'—and that," she concluded, softly, "will be worth it all to me."

Again a silence which sank deeper than words—a silence which sealed their compact.

She came from it with the vigorously practical, "Now, Dr. Parkman,"—sitting up very straight, with an assertive little gesture—"you go out to that university and fire their souls! Wake them up! Make them see it! And when do you think I can begin?"

That turned them to actual issues; he spoke freely of difficulties, and they discussed them together calmly. Her enthusiasm was not builded on dreams alone; it was not of that volatile stuff which must perish in detail and difficulty. She was ready to meet it all, to ponder and plan. And where he had been carried by her enthusiasm he was held by her resourcefulness.

"Are august dignitaries of reason and judgment likely to rise up and make it very unpleasant for you after I've gone?" she asked him, laughingly, when she had risen to go.

"Very likely to," he laughed.

"Tell them it's not their affair! Tell them to do what they're told and not ask too many questions!"

"I'll try to put them in their proper place," he assured her.

He watched her as she stood there buttoning her glove—slight, almost frail, scarcely one's idea of a "masterful woman." It struck him then as strange that she had not so much as asked for pledge of his allegiance. What was it about her—?

She was holding out her hand. Something in her eyes lighted and glorified her whole face. "Thank you, doctor," she said, very low.

For a long time he sat motionless before his desk. He was thinking of many things. "Nothing in which to believe," he murmured at last, looking about the room still warm with the spirit she had left—"nothing in which to believe—when there is love such as this in the world?"



CHAPTER XXV

DR. PARKMAN'S WAY

The next morning Dr. Parkman turned his automobile in the direction of the University of Chicago. There was a very grim look on his face as he sent the car, with the hand of an expert, through the crowded streets. He had his do-or-die expression, and the way he was letting the machine out would not indicate a shrinking back from what lay before him. He rather chuckled once; that is, it began in a chuckle, and ended with the semblance of a grunt, and when he finally swung the car down the Midway, he was saying to himself: "Glad of it! I've been wanting for a long time to tell that Lane what I thought of him."

Inquiries over the telephone had developed the fact that through some shifting about, Dr. George Lane was temporary head of the department; it was to Dr. George Lane then that Dr. Parkman must go with the matter in hand this morning. That had seemed bad at first, for Lane was one man out there he couldn't get on with and did not want to. They always clashed; upon their last meeting Lane had said—"Really now, Dr. Parkman, don't you feel that a broader culture is the real need of the medical profession?" and Parkman had retorted, "Shouldn't wonder, but has it ever struck you, Dr. Lane, that a little more horse sense is the real need of the university professor?" He declared, grimly, as he finally drew his car to a snorting stop at the university that he would have to try some other method than "firing his soul," as Ernestine had bade him do. "In the first place," he figured it out, "he has no soul, and if he had, I wouldn't be the one to fire it with anything but rage." But the doctor was not worrying much about results. He thought he had a little ammunition in reserve which assured the outcome, and which would enable him, at the same time, to "let loose on Lane," should the latter show a tendency to become too important.

The erudite Lane was a neatly built little fellow, very spick and span. First America and then England had done their best—or worst—by him. Just as every hair on his head was properly brushed, so Dr. Parkman felt quite sure that every idea within the head was properly beaten down with a pair of intellectual military brushes, one of which he had acquired to the west, and the other to the east of the Atlantic. "I suppose he's a scholar," mused the doctor, as he surveyed the back of the dignitary's head while waiting, "but what in God's name would he do if he were ever to be hit with an original idea?"

"Ah, yes, Dr. Parkman, we so seldom see you very busy men out here. We always appreciate it when you busy men look in upon us."

Now the tone did not appeal to Dr. Parkman, and with one of his quick decisions he bade tact take itself to the four winds, leaving him alone with his reserve guns.

"I always appreciate it," he began abruptly, not attempting to deny that he was a busy man, "when people take as little of my time as possible. I will try to do unto others as I would that others do unto me."

By the merest lifting of his eyebrows, Lane signified that he would make no attempt at detaining the doctor longer than he wished to stay. He awaited punctiliously the other man's pleasure, silently emphasising that the interview was not of his bringing about. "Thinks I'm a boor and a brute," mused Parkman.

"What I wanted to see you about," he began, "relates to Dr. Hubers."

"Ah, yes—poor Hubers. A remarkable man, in many ways. It is one of those things which make one—very sad. We wanted him to go on with his lectures, but he did not seem to feel quite equal to it."

"Huh!"—that might mean a variety of things. The tone of patronage infuriated Karl's friend. "Jealous—sore—glad Karl's out of it," he was interpreting it.

Then he delivered this very calmly: "Well, the fact of the matter is, that among all medical men, and in that part of the scientific world which I may call the active part—the only part of any real value—Karl Hubers is regarded so far above every other man who ever set foot in this university that all the rest of the place is looked upon as something which surrounds him. Over in Europe, they say—Chicago?—University of Chicago? Oh, yes—yes indeed, I remember now. That's where Hubers is.'"

"The professor," as Dr. Parkman frequently insisted on calling him, showed himself capable of a rush of red blood to the face, and of a very human engulfing of emotion in a hurried cough. "Ah, I see you are a warm friend, Dr. Parkman," quickly regaining his impenetrable superiority, and smiling tolerantly. "But looking at it quite dispassionately, putting aside sympathy and all personal feeling, I have sometimes felt that Dr. Hubers, in spite of his—I may say gifts, in some directions, is a little lacking in that broad culture, that finer quality of universal scholarship which should dominate the ideal university man of to-day."

Dr. Parkman was smiling in a knowing way to himself. "I see what you mean, Professor, though I would put it a little differently. I wouldn't call him in the least lacking in broad culture, but he is rather lacking in pedantry, in limitations, in intellectual snobbery, in university folderols. And of course a man who is actually doing something in the world, who stands for real achievement, has a little less time to look after the fine quality of universal scholarship."

Perhaps Lane would have been either more or less than human, had he not retorted to that: "But as to this great achievement—it has never been forthcoming, has it?"

The doctor had a little nervous affection of his face. The corner of one eye and one corner of his mouth sometimes twitched a little. People who knew him well were apt to grow nervous themselves when they made that observation. But as no one who knew him chanced to be present, the storm broke all unannounced.

"For which," he snarled out, "every cheap skate of a university professor who never did anything himself but paddle other men's canoes, for which every human phonograph and intellectual parrot sends out thanks from his two-by-four soul! But among men who are men, among physicians who have cause to know his worth, among scientists big enough to get out of their own shadows, and, thank God, among the people who haven't been fossilised by clammy universities out of all sense of human values—among them, I say, Karl Hubers is appreciated for what he was close to doing when this damnable fate stepped in and stopped him!"

The man of broad culture, very white as to the face, rose to his fullest height. It should not be held against him that his fullest height failed in reaching the other man's shoulder. "If there is nothing further," he choked out, "perhaps we may consider the interview concluded?"

"No," retorted Parkman serenely, "the interview has just begun. It's your business, isn't it, to listen to matters relating to this department?"

"It is; but as I am accustomed to meeting men of some—"

"Manners?" supplied the doctor pleasantly. "As I am accustomed to men of a somewhat different type,"—he picked the phrase punctiliously, manifestly a conservative, even in war—"I was naturally unprepared for the nature of your remarks."

"Oh well, the unexpected must be rather agreeable when one leads so cut and dried a life. But what I want to see you about," he went on, quite as though he had dropped the most pleasant thing in the world, "is just this. I want you to give the use of Dr. Hubers' laboratory, his equipment and at least one of his assistants, to Dr. Hubers' wife, that she may get in shape to work with him as his assistant, and enable him to carry on his work and do those things, which, as you correctly state, are still unachieved."

Now the delivering of that pleased Dr. Parkman very much. He scarcely attempted to conceal his righteous pride.

"Really, now," gasped the head of the department, after a minute of speechless staring, "really, now, Dr. Parkman, you astonish me."—"That's the truth, if he ever spoke it," thought the doctor grimly."—Dr. Hubers' wife, I understand you to say?"—and he of erudition was equal to a covert sneer—"just what has she to do with it, please?"

"She has everything to do with it. In the first place, she is rather interested in Dr. Hubers. Then she's a remarkable woman. Needs to freshen up on some things, needs quite a little coaching, in fact; but in my judgment the best way for Hubers to go on with his work—you didn't think for a moment he was out of it, did you?—is for his wife to get in shape to work with him. That can be arranged all right?" he concluded pleasantly.

Then Dr. George Lane spoke with the authority in him vested. "It certainly can not," he said, with an icy decisiveness.

"But why not?" pursued Parkman, innocently.

"Oh, now, don't misunderstand me, Professor. I didn't for a minute expect that you were to give any of your valuable time to Mrs. Hubers. Hastings is the fellow I'd like her turned over to. He's a friend of mine, and he's in sympathy, you know, with Dr. Hubers' work. All you'll have to do is to tell Hastings to do it," explained the doctor, expansively.

The head of the department quite gleamed with the pride of authority as he pronounced: "Which you may be very certain I shall not do."

"No?" said Parkman, leaning over the desk a little and looking at him. "You say—no?"

"I do," replied the man in authority, with brevity, emphasis and finality.

Dr. Parkman leaned back in his chair and seemed to be in deep thought. "Then the popular idea is all wrong, isn't it?"

"I am at a loss to know to what popular idea you refer," said the professor, with a suitable indifference.

"Oh merely to the popular idea that this place amounts to something; that it has let go of a little mediaevalism, and is more than a crude, cheap pattern—funny what ideas people get, isn't it? Now there are people who think the university here puts a value on individuality, that it would actually bend a rule or two to fit an individual case, in fact that it likes initiative, encourages originality, wouldn't in the least mind having a few actual achievements to its credit."

"At the same time," goaded from his icy calm—"it does not propose to make itself ridiculous!"

"And doing a rather unconventional thing, in order to bring about a very great thing, would be making itself ridiculous, would it?"

"I fail to see how anything so preposterous could bring about good results," said the man in authority, introducing into that a note of dismissal.

"Do you?" replied Parkman, not yet dismissed. "Well, if you will pardon a little more plain speaking, I will say that this is something I know a good deal more about than you do."

"We have made other arrangements for the laboratory," and the professor picked up a paper from his desk and looked it over, nice subtilties evidently being lost.

"So? Going to give it to some fellow who will devote himself, after the fashion of university men, to verifying other men's conclusions?"

Then Dr. Parkman rose. "Well," he said, "you've had your chance. You had a chance to do something which would give this place an excuse for existing. I'm sorry you weren't big enough to take it.

"I fear medical men may feel some little prejudice about this," he remarked, easily—not in the least as though dealing in heavy ammunition. "Hubers commands the medical men, you know. They care more for him than for all the rest of the fellows out here put together. About that medical school of yours," he said, meditatively, "that you're pushing so hard just now,—to whom shall I tender my resignation as chairman of the committee I'm on? And, at the same time, I'll just be released from the lectures I was to give in the winter quarter. I'm entirely too busy to spend my time on a place that doesn't care for anything but dead men's bones. Lewis and Richmond will probably want to pull out too. Of course," he went on, seemingly to himself, "a thing like this will unfortunately be noised about, and all doctors will be a little sore about your not caring to stand by Hubers. But I suppose I had better see the president about all that. He gets home next week? And, come to think of it, I'm pretty close to a couple of members of the board. I operated on both Lessing and Tyler. Both of those fellows have a notion they owe their lives to me. That makes people feel rather close to one, you know. But then, of course, you don't know—why should you? And, dear me—there's that rich old patient of mine, Burley. Now isn't it strange,"—turning genially to Lane, as if merely interesting him in a philosophical proposition—"how one thing leads to another? I fear Burley may not be so interested in making that gift to the new medical building, if he knows I've cut loose from the place. The president will feel rather sore about that, too,—you know how the president is about such things. But then,"—shrugging his shoulders indifferently—"he needn't feel sore at me."

Dr. George Lane was swallowing very hard. Though learned, he was not dull. Word by word he had drunk in the bitter truth that this big, dark, gruff, ill-mannered man was not to be put down with impunity. Call it bullying—any hard name you would, there was no evading the fact that it was power in sledge hammer strokes. "The professor" was just wise enough to see that there lay before him the unpleasant task of retraction.

"Ah—of course, doctor," he began, striving for nonchalance, "do not take this as too final. You see anything so unusual as this will have to come before the committee. You did not present it to me—ah—very fully, but the more I consider it, the more I am disposed to think it is a thing we—may care to undertake. I—will present it."

"Oh, don't bother about that," said the doctor pleasantly. "I wouldn't worry the committee about it, if I were you. I can get a down-town laboratory all right. I simply thought I would give the university a chance at the thing. It doesn't matter," he concluded, opening the door.

"Well now, I'll tell you, doctor," said Lane, and part of his face was white, and part of it was red, "while you're out here, you would better go up and see Hastings. I'm sure I can say—speaking for the committee—that we will be very glad to have Mrs. Hubers here."

"I fired his soul all right," thought the doctor, grimly, as he walked up to find Hastings. "Those little two by fours!"



CHAPTER XXVI

OLD-FASHIONED LOVE

Karl's new secretary was what Karl himself called "one of those philosophical ducks." "That is," he explained to Ernestine, "he is one of those fellows who has been graduated from science into philosophy."

"But wouldn't you get on better with one of the scientific students who hadn't been graduated yet?" she laughed.

"Oh, no; no, I don't mind having a graduate. Ross can do the work all right. I'm lucky to get him. There aren't many of them who are stenographers, and then he can give me most of his time. He's finishing up for his Ph.D."

"And was he really a student of science in the beginning?"

"Well, after a fashion. The kind that is graduated into philosophy."

"Karl," she laughed, "despite your proud boast to the contrary, you're bigoted. It's the bigotry of science."

"No, it's having science patronised by these fellows who don't know anything about it. If they'd once roll up their sleeves and do some actual work they'd give up that idea of being so easily graduated. But they want to get where they'll not have to work. Philosophy's a lazy man's job."

"There you go again! A clear case of the scientific arrogance."

"No, they amuse me; that's all. 'I had a great deal of science in my undergraduate work,' Mr. Ross said, 'but I feel now that I want to go into the larger field of philosophy.'"

"Karl," she laughed, a little amused and a little indignant, "did he actually say that to you?"

"He actually did. And with the pleasantest, most off-hand air. It was on the tip of my tongue to reply: 'Fortunately, science never loses anything in these people she graduates so easily into philosophy.'

"I wonder what they think," he went on, "when we turn them upside down two or three times a century? It doesn't seem to worry them any. 'Give me some eggs and some milk and some sugar and I'll make a nice pudding,' they say—that's about what goes into a pudding, isn't it? And then they take the stuff in very thankless fashion, and when their pudding is done, they say—'Isn't it pathetic the way some people spend their lives producing nothing but eggs and milk and sugar?' And the worst of it is that half the time they spoil our good stuff by putting it together wrong."

"Such a waste of good eggs and milk and sugar," she laughed.

"But fortunately it is a superior kind of eggs and milk and sugar that can't be hurt by being thrown together wrong. The pudding is bad, but the good stuff in it is indestructible. And as we don't have to sit down to their table, why should we worry over their failures?"

"Why, indeed? But then, I don't agree that all puddings are bad."

"No, not all of them. But it rubs me the wrong way to see bad cooks take such liberties with their materials."

"Because good eggs and milk and sugar aren't so easy to produce," she agreed.

"Some of us have paid a pretty good price for them," he said.

That turned them to the things always close to them, and they were silent for a time. It was Saturday evening, and on Monday Ernestine would begin her new work. Dr. Parkman had arranged it for her—she did not know how, but it had been done, and Professor Hastings, who would have her in charge, was eager to give all possible help. That day, while Karl was busy, she had been reading a book Dr. Parkman had given her. He would keep her supplied with the best things for her to read, he said, selecting that which was vital, so that she would not waste time blundering through Karl's library at random. Dr. Parkman was being so splendid about it all. He was a man to give himself to a thing without reservations; if he helped at all he made his help count to the uttermost. She felt him back of her as a force which would not fail. And she would show him his confidence was not misplaced—his support not given to a vain cause! Resolution strengthened within her as the way was cleared. Unconsciously she caught Karl's hand and held it tight in both of hers.

"You know, liebchen," he said, caressing her hand in response, "I've done considerable thinking of late. Perhaps a fellow thinks more about things when he is not right in them, and it seemed to me to-day, when I was thinking over these things suggested by Ross, that the reason most people don't get on better with their work is just because they don't care for it enough. You have to love a thing to do much with it. Take it in any kind of scientific work; the work is hard, there is detail, drudgery, and discouragement. You're going to lose heart and grip unless you have that enthusiasm for the thing as a whole. You must see it big, and have that—well, call it fanaticism, if you want to—a willingness to give yourself up to it, at any rate. The reason these fellows want to get into the 'bigger field of philosophy' is because they've never known anything about the bigger field of science."

She loved that fire in his voice, that rare, fine light which at times like this shone from his face. In such moments, he seemed a man set apart; as one divinely appointed. It filled her heart with a warm, glad rush to think it was she would bring him back to his own. It was she would reseat Karl on his throne. And what awaited him then? Might not his possibilities be greater than ever before? Would not determination rise in him with new tremendousness, and would not hope, after its rebirth in despair, soar to undreamed of heights? Would not the meditation of these days, the new understanding rising from relinquishment and suffering, bring him back to his work a scientist who was also philosopher?

She believed that that would be true, that the things his blindness taught him to see would more than atone for the things shut away. And would not she herself come to love the work just because of what it meant to Karl? Care for it because of what it could do for him? Loving it first because he loved it, would not she come to love it for itself?

A quiver of pain had drawn the beautiful light from his face. "Tell me about your work, dear," he said abruptly. "You haven't said much about it of late."

She turned away her face. She was always forgetting that he could not see her face.

"You know you must get to work, sweetheart," he went on as she did not answer. "I am expecting great things of my little girl."

"I hope you will not be disappointed," she answered, very low.

"Of course I'll not be—if you just get to work. Now when are you going to begin?"

"I'm going to begin Monday," replied Ernestine.

"Good! Painting some great picture?"

She hesitated. "I hope it will be a great picture."

"Tell me about it."

"I can tell you better, dear, when it is a little farther along."

"You love your work, Ernestine. You have the real, true, fundamental love for it. I always loved to see your face light up when you spoke of your work. Is your face lighted up now?" he asked, a little whimsically, but earnestly.

She laughed, but the laugh caught in her throat.

"Will you tell me about your picture as it progresses, dear? Don't be afraid to talk to me of your work, Ernestine. Things will be less hard for me, if I think you are happy. And it will be good to know there is to be some great thing come of our love, dear. I want something to stand for it, something beautiful and great."

"There will be!" she said passionately. "There is going to be."

"I know," he said gently. "I am sure of it."

He stroked her face lovingly then. He loved so to do that.

"Will you mind much, Karl," she began, a little timidly, "if I am away from you some this year?"

"Away from me?" he asked, startled. "Why, what do you mean, Ernestine?"

"Oh, not that I am going away," she hastened. "But, as I say, I am going to begin my work on Monday, and part of the time I shall be working, away from home."

"You mean in some studio?"

Her face grew troubled; she frowned a little, bit her lip, but after a second's hesitation, answered: "Yes."

"Found some fellow to study with?"

And again she answered yes.

"Well now look here, liebchen, have I been such a brute that you thought I wouldn't want you to set foot out of the house? I didn't suppose there was anyone here you'd have much to gain from, but if there is, so much the better. I want you to go right ahead and do your best—don't you know that?"

But there was a note of forced cheer in it. It would be hard for Karl to feel she was not in the house, when he had come to depend on her for so many things. She could not tell him why she was willing to be away from him. It hurt her to think he might feel she did not understand.

A little later Georgia and her mother and Georgia's Mr. Tank came over to see them. During the summer Ernestine and Karl had been bestowing an approving interest on Georgia and Joseph Tank. Karl liked him; he said the fellow laughed as though there was no reason why he shouldn't. "He doesn't know everything," he told Ernestine, "but knows too much to seem to know what he doesn't."

Georgia had been disposed to be apologetic about Mr. Tank's paper bags, and Karl had retorted: "Great Scott, Georgia, is there anything the world needs much worse than paper bags?"

To-night Mr. Tank was all enthusiasm about a ball game he had attended that afternoon. He gave Karl the story of the game in the picturesque fashion of a man more eager to express what he wishes to say than to guard the purity of his English. "Oh, it was hot stuff, clear through," he concluded. "Bully good game!"

"It is sometimes almost impossible for me to tell what Georgia and Mr. Tank are talking about," sighed Mrs. McCormick. "They use so many words which are not in the dictionary. Now when people confine themselves to words which are in the dictionary, I am always able to ascertain their meaning."

"I'm long for saying a thing the way I can get it said," laughed Tank. "And I'm long for this new spelling. I never could get next to the old system, and now if they push this deal through, I can pat myself on the back and say, 'Good for you, old boy. You were just waiting for them to start in right.' It would be such a good one on the teachers who bumped my head against the wall because I didn't begin pneumonia with a p and every other minute run in an i or an e I had sense enough to know had no business there at all. Oh, I'm long for taking a fall out of the old spelling book."

"I do hope, Karl," admonished Mrs. McCormick, "that you will use your influence with scholars to see that the dictionary is let alone. It is certainly a very profane and presumptuous thing to think of changing a dictionary,"—turning to Ernestine for approval.

"When I was a child," observed Georgia, "I had a sublime and unquestioning faith in two things,—the Bible and the dictionary. The Bible was written by God and the dictionary by Noah Webster, and both were to remain intact to the end of time. But the University of Chicago is re-writing the Bible, and 'most any one who feels like it can take a hand at the dictionary, so what is there left for a poor girl to believe in?"

"Believe in the American dollar," said Tank cheerfully. "That's the solidest thing I've ever been up against."

Mrs. McCormick left them to call upon a friend who lived next door, Karl and Mr. Tank turned to frenzied finance, and Georgia and Ernestine wandered away by themselves—Ernestine surmised that Georgia wanted to talk to her.

"How goes it at The Mail?" she asked.

"Oh—so so," said Georgia fretfully. "Newspaper work is a thankless job."

"Why, Georgia, I thought you loved it so."

"Oh, yes,—yes, in a way, I do. But it's thankless. And you never get anywhere. You break your neck one day, and then there's nothing to do the next, but start in and break it again. You're never any better to-day for yesterday's killing. Now with you—when you paint a good picture, it stays painted."

"Why don't you get married?" asked Ernestine, innocently.

"Married! Pooh—that would be a nice thing!"

"Indeed it would. If you care for the man."

Georgia was fidgeting; it was plain she wanted to talk about marriage, if she could do so without seeming to be vitally interested in the subject.

"I mean it, Georgia," Ernestine went on. "If you care for him, marry him."

"Care for whom?" Georgia demanded, and then coloured and laughed at the folly of her evasion. "Well, the fact of the matter is," she finally blurted out, "I don't know whether I do or not. Now, in a way, I do. That is, I want him to care for me, and I shouldn't like it if he sailed away to the Philippine Islands and never showed up again, but at the same time—well, I don't think even you could get up much sentiment about paper bags, and besides"—tempestuously—"the name Tank's preposterous!"

Ernestine laughed. "What are those terms the lawyers are so fond of—immaterial, irrelevant, and something else? Georgia, once when I was a little girl and went to visit my grandmother, I had a stubborn fit and wouldn't eat any dinner because the dining-room table had such ugly legs. And the dinner, Georgia, was good."

It was Georgia who laughed then. "But Ernestine"—with a swift turn to seriousness—"you're not a fair sample; you and Karl are—exceptional. You see you have so much—intellectual companionship—sympathetic ideas—kindred tastes—don't you see what a fool I'd make of myself in judging the thing by you?"—she ended with a little gulp which might have been a laugh or might have been something else.

Ernestine was giving some affectionate rubs to her brass coffee pot. When she raised her head it was to look at Georgia strangely. She continued to look, and the strangeness about her intensified. "Shall I tell you something, Georgia?"—her voice low and queer. "Something I know? You wouldn't be willing to fight 'till you dropped for sympathetic ideas. You wouldn't be willing to lay down your life for intellectual companionship. You wouldn't be willing to go barefoot and hungry and friendless for kindred tastes. Don't for one minute believe you would! The only thing for which you'd be willing to let the whole world slip away from you is an old-fashioned, out-of-date thing called love—just the primitive, fundamental love there is between a man and a woman. If you haven't it, Georgia—hold back. If you have,"—a wonderful smile of understanding glowed through a rush of tears—"oh, Georgia, if you have!"



CHAPTER XXVII

LEARNING TO BE KARL'S EYES

She wondered many times in the next few months why she had put it in that very simple, self-evident way.

For there are things harder than to go barefoot and hungry and friendless. Those are the primitive things, to be met with one's endowment of primitive courage, elemental strength. But poise of spirit can not be wrested from elemental courage. To carry one's carefully wrapped up burden with the nonchalance of the day—nature forgot to make endowment for that; it is something then to be worked out wholly by one's self.

Persecution she could have endured like a Spartan; but it was almost unendurable to be tolerated. She was sure it would have been easier if only they had been rude to her. To be openly jeered at would fire her soul. But there was so little in their manner either to kindle enthusiasm or stir aggressiveness. She began to think that the most trying thing in the world was to have people polite to one.

The very first week was the worst of all. No one knew what to do with her; as this was her own idea, an idea no one else pretended to understand, it was expected she make some suggestions for the proper disposition of herself. But poor Ernestine did not know enough about it to make disposition of herself. She could only smile with a courageous serenity, and ask that she be shown how to help about things. And so Mr. Willard, who was in charge of Karl's laboratory, and who was Karl without Karl's genius, turned her over to Mr. Beason, his assistant. Beason would show her how to "help."

Her sense of humour helped her there. It was amusing that one who was learning to "help" should be such an encumbrance. And there were many amusing things about Mr. Beason. He was afraid of her because she was a woman, for like reason disapproving of her presence in the laboratory, and yet there was an unconscious deference, the same kind of veneration he would have paid Karl's old coat, or his pipe.

John Beason had never been shaken by a genuine emotion until the day he read that Dr. Karl Hubers had lost his eyesight and must give up his work. In the horror, the rage and the grief which swept over him then, Beason rose to the heights of a human being, never to be quite without humanship again. When he came back that fall, Professor Hastings was quick to sense the change.

Beason was given a place in Dr. Hubers' old laboratory, as one of Mr. Willard's assistants. That first morning, after he had been in there about an hour, he came out to Professor Hastings, who chanced to be alone.

"I don't know whether I want to stay in there or not," the boy jerked out.

He told him that Dr. Hubers would like to have him there. "You know he liked you," he said simply.

Beason sat a long time pondering. "Well, they'll never have another man like him," he said at last, savagely, and choking a little.

After the first few weeks his attitude toward Ernestine took on a complexity an analysis of which would have greatly astounded Mr. Beason himself. He did a great deal of pondering as to whether it would really be possible for Dr. Hubers to go on with his work. It seemed to him it would not be, but a few things Mrs. Hubers had said in a very simple way had opened up a great deal of speculation as to what was possible and what was not. And the thing which made him grow so quickly into an unconscious respect for her was her assumption that the most important thing in the world was that Dr. Hubers should go on with his work. Now that looked as though she had some sense, Beason admitted. Of course the ridiculous part was thinking she was the one to bring it about, when anybody would know it would have to be some one—well, some one like himself. But then it was just like a woman to think she could do anything she took it into her head to do. Of course she would very soon find out that she couldn't, but if she proved some one else could, why then she wouldn't be so bad, after all.

Ernestine was quick to see that the way to enlist Mr. Beason was to talk to him about Karl. They were alone in the laboratory for an hour each morning, and during that period she always managed to say something about Dr. Hubers to leave Beason closer to her at the end of the hour than he had been at the beginning. There were more ways than one of winning a scientific victory, she concluded, half humorously, but with a touch of sadness. She was beginning to see that it was a battle which demanded tact and diplomacy quite as much as brains and skill. She must not only furnish enthusiasm for herself, she must inspire all associated with her if she were to gain from them what they had to give.

It was after she had one day spoken with unusual freedom of the suffering which surged beneath Karl's calm acceptance of the inevitable that Beason took his first firm stand in her behalf.

"Well now, of course," he conceded, after a long time of turning it over in his mind, "you really don't have to know much, do you? The great thing for you to learn is to tell exactly how results look. It isn't as if you had to reason and think,"—that was Beason's supreme rise to graciousness.

"Why, you have the idea exactly, Mr. Beason," she replied, admiringly, and Beason grasped that he had manifested rare insight.

"Well now,"—doubtfully—"I suppose you might practice on me. Practice is what you need. I haven't looked at any of those things over there. See if you can give me an idea of what they are."

She did her best, blundering freely, and thinking with an inward smile that she had not counted on anything so difficult as translating things to Beason.

Then he took the tube from her hand and explained how she had failed to get the significant things, and how valueless she would be unless she made the determining points stand out. He was very blunt and unflattering, but she was grateful to him from the bottom of her heart. "You see you do have to have some brains after all," he concluded with a sigh.

But after that he frequently devoted his entire hour to helping her. He had come to accept her as one of his duties, and Beason was not one to neglect his appointed task. Day by day she gained a great deal from the uncompromising Mr. Beason.

In fact, after those first uncertain weeks, she gained a great deal from every one. Gradually it began to systematise itself, and Ernestine's good sense, her earnestness, which was fairly devotion, her respect for every one's knowledge and gratitude for all help—to say nothing of her eyes and smile and voice—slowly penetrated even the conservatism of science.

Dr. Parkman did not neglect her. He came out often and spent an hour in the laboratory, bringing things for her to work with. Perhaps the doctor saw that quite as much as his help, she needed the prestige his attention would give. It was no small thing to have the great Dr. Parkman giving her his time. "Upon my soul," Mr. Willard said one day, after the doctor had been there a long time and had seemed very much in earnest, "I don't believe Parkman's the man to spend his time on a wild goose chase!"

"It doesn't seem so, does it?" said Professor Hastings ingenuously.

"Why, think what that man's time is worth!" continued Mr. Willard, growing more and more impressed.

"I don't know any one else out here who would get much of it," Professor Hastings ventured.

"Well, she is a remarkable woman," Willard said then, insistently.

And Professor Hastings—understanding many things about human beings—said he was really coming to feel that way himself.

Ernestine was alone in the laboratory one bright morning in December. Mr. Beason had just gone away after assuring her anew that she had a very great deal to learn. Perhaps it was funny, but one was not always in the mood for humorous things. Sometimes one felt more like putting one's head down on the table and having a good cry. Her hands were not quite steady, as she went about the work Beason had patronisingly left for her to do, and out of the mists which blinded her there came a picture of her own quiet studio at home, where she had worked with her own things, things with which she was supreme. She saw herself at her easel, working in that quick, sure way of hers, no one to tell her some one else could do it a great deal better, and that it was extremely doubtful whether she could ever do anything at all. A longing to be back there doing the things she knew she could do, a longing to have again that sure sense of her work as good, swept over her then. She was accustomed to a sense of mastery; it was that made some of these things so hard. It was not easy to make over one's soul, even when it was love called one on. As she went steadily ahead with her task, working out painstakingly the correction Beason had made, she wondered whether there were as many tears back of other smiles as there had often been back of hers.

But she had been able to smile!—that was something for which to give thanks. Not even Karl himself would ever know what she had gone through, but what she had gone through was of small consequence could she but push her way on to what she was confident awaited her. There was sustaining power in that thought: her hands did not tremble now, her eyes were clear; she worked on steadily and firmly.

One thing which had unnerved her was that Karl had seemed to hate to have her go away that morning. He had followed her out into the hall. "Working so hard, liebchen?" he said—and was it not wistfully? Perhaps he had not felt like work himself and had wanted her to stay at home with him. It hurt cruelly to think Karl might not understand her willingness to be away from him so much.

His presence was always with her in the laboratory. The days brought a very clear picture of Karl at work there, a new understanding of his adjustment to his work, firmer comprehension of his love for it. Often a sense of the terribleness and wrongness of his disaster would rush over her, crowding her heart with the old rebellion and bitterness. Again and again she lived through the hour Karl had spent there alone, facing the truth, and then a horror of those things with which she worked, those awful things which had destroyed Karl's eyes, would take hold of her as a physical fear, a repulsion, almost impossible to fight.

She was constantly brought to see the difference between him and these other men; every hour she spent there brought deeper appreciation of Karl's greatness, clearer sense of it. And when their kindly patronage sometimes passed from the amusing to the insufferable, she would think how Karl, master of them all, took her so unreservedly into his mind and heart, cherishing her ideas and opinions as quite the most vital things in all the world, and sometimes that would help her to smile, and not infrequently it made her long to hurl a test-tube at the self-satisfied head of Mr. Beason. But always, in the end, it caused her to set her whole being with new persistence, more passionate stubbornness, in this determination to achieve.

It was while she was still alone that Professor Hastings came in with a note he had just received for her. "It's from Dr. Parkman," she said as she tore it open hastily.

She read a little of it and then sat down. He thought for a moment that she was going to cry.

"Dr. Parkman wants me to come down to one of his operations this afternoon,"—she looked up at him appealingly. "I—I never went to anything like that," she added, with a tremulous laugh.

"What does he say about it?" he asked, anxiously.

"Merely—merely that it will be a good cancer operation, and that I had better begin on that part of the work. He says he would be willing to do that, but he thinks it will help me to be able to make some of the observations for Dr. Hubers myself. I—well, it sometimes makes me sick to see things I don't like,"—laughing a little, and plainly unnerved.

"Oh, no," he assured her; "it will not be that bad." But he added, uneasily: "Dr. Parkman seems anxious for you to come?"

"No, not particularly anxious; he simply tells me to be there at two o'clock."

"I suppose then you'd better go," he laughed. "You won't mind much. You may to-day, but you'll become accustomed to it very soon. And it is important. Some one else might do it, but it will help your own understanding of the subject, make your equipment that much better. It's a great thing for you to have Dr. Parkman's help. And he is so pleased with your progress. He told me the other day that he thought it absolutely phenomenal the way you were getting on."

"Did he?" she asked eagerly, for she had learned to seize upon all which would buoy her up.

"We all think so," he replied earnestly. "Even Mr. Willard, who, as you may have observed, is not an enthusiast, said the other day that you were becoming really useful."

She brightened, and then laughed. She had never supposed she would be inordinately pleased to have a man like Mr. Willard say she was really useful.

"While Mr. Beason went so far as to assert that you had a general intelligence not unlike that of a man."

She laughed heartily at that. "Well, I'm afraid they won't think I have the nerve or sense of a man when I get in the operating room this afternoon," she said with a wry little face.

"Well, remember what it's all for," he said, in that simple way of his which went so far because it was so direct, "and remember that we are all believing in you."

In response to that she went back to her work with new resolution.

It was a little before two when her lagging footsteps brought her in sight of the hospital. "Why, I act as though I were going to my own execution," she told herself scornfully. Ever since receiving the note, she had been trying not to think about what was before her; but it was here now, a fact to be faced. Conquering an impulse to turn about and beat a hasty retreat, she advanced with a brisk and business-like air she was sure would deceive the most knowing of hospital attendants.

They seemed to know about her in the office, and took her up to one of the rooms adjoining the operating room. The hospital was a very large place, and there were a great many odours she did not like. She hated herself for being so silly about things! Through the open door she saw many faces: white faces, thin faces, faces drawn with pain, faces robbed of hope, faces fretful, and faces indifferent, and she caught sight of one girl whose very happy eyes looked out from a face which bore the record of much pain. A story easy to read: she had been very ill, but now she was getting well. And how calm and well-ordered a place it was— strange how they could keep so unruffled a surface over so turbulent a sea!

A nurse upstairs said that Dr. Parkman had told her to look after Mrs. Hubers. She dressed her in a white gown and talked to her pleasantly about operations in general. Ernestine was glad that this very rational being did not know how hard she was struggling to keep her teeth from chattering.

In a minute, Dr. Parkman himself came in, he, too, in white gown, ready for the operation. He looked so strange; to her nervous vision, supernatural, a being from other worlds, holding the destiny of this one in those strong, supple, incisive fingers. "I don't suppose you'll enjoy this much," he said, "but you'd better get used to them. Karl may need you to do some of this for him, and you wouldn't like it not to be able to."

"No, indeed," she replied, heartily—very heartily. "I'm so glad to come."

He looked at her in his keen, deep-seeing way. She had an uncomfortable sense that he had a distinct impulse toward a smile.

"Hughes, one of our young doctors, will point out a few things to you as we go along, and I'll go over it with you afterwards."

Then they went into the operating room.

She fought hard against the smell of ether, and managed to hold herself quite firm against it. But there was a ghastliness in the whole thing which frightened her.

The patient was lying there on the operating table, covered with sheets, looking as if dead. It was a woman who was to be operated on, and Ernestine could not overcome the idea that it was a dreadful thing for her to be there alone, surrounded by strange people who were acting in so unconcerned a manner. They did not seem to be thinking in the least of what life and death meant to this woman. One young doctor was showing something to another, and they laughed right out loud! The woman whose life was at stake was not impressing them any more than—not any more than that terrible looking little instrument which the nurse handed to Dr. Parkman.

Her dizzy vision got Dr. Parkman's face as he leaned over his patient. She had never seen such a look of concentration; he did not know anything in the world then save the thing he was doing. And the concentration was enveloped in so tremendous a coolness. But her own face must have warned the nurse who was looking after her, for she whispered, "Suppose you come over here by the window until they have started. There is no need for you to watch while they are making the incision."

So she stood there with her back to them, looking out at a little park across from the hospital. Down there, men and women were moving about quite as usual; one girl was laughing very heartily about something. Strange that people should be laughing!

"Now you might come over here," said the nurse, as pleasantly and easily as though saying, "Wouldn't you like a cup of tea?"

She tried then with all her might to take it as the rest of them were taking it. But they were operating on the stomach, and her first glimpse caused an almost uncontrollable sinking in the knees. Her ears began to pound, but by listening very hard she could hear what Dr. Hughes was saying. He was saying something about its being a very nice case, and she wondered if the woman were married, and if she had any children, and then she knew how irrelevant and unprofessional that was. Dr. Hughes was telling her to look at something, and she did look, and she saw Dr. Parkman's hands, only it seemed they were not human hands at all, but some infallible instrument, an instrument with an unconquerable soul,—and then everything was dancing before her eyes, her ears were pounding harder and harder, her knees sinking, everything swaying, some one had hold of her, and some one else, a great many miles away was saying—"Take her out!"

When she opened her eyes, she was lying on a couch in an anteroom, the nurse bending over her. The attendant smiled pleasantly, no more agitated than before. "Too bad," she said; "a good many of us take it like that at first."

But Ernestine was not to be comforted. It meant too much to her. The tears were running down her face, but suddenly she brushed them angrily aside, and sat up. "I'm going back," she said resolutely.

"Oh, but you mustn't," protested the nurse,—"not today. It really wouldn't do. And anyway they must be almost through. Dr. Parkman works so rapidly."

It was a very disheartened Ernestine who sat there then alone. "What will Dr. Parkman think of me?" she bewailed to herself. "He will never want to have anything more to do with me. He will be so disgusted that he will let me alone now. And how am I to get along without him? Oh, why am I such a fool?"

The whole day had been hard, she was tired out when she came, and this was too much. So she just lay back on the couch and cried. It was so that Dr. Parkman found her when he came briskly in at the close of the operation.

"Why, what's the matter?" he demanded. "Heard some bad news?"

"Bad—news!" she choked out; "no, I haven't heard any bad news—except that I'm an utterly worthless, weak-minded fool!"

"And where did you hear that?" he pursued.

"Oh, doctor—I'm so ashamed! But if you'll only give me another chance! If you'll just not give me up for a little while yet!"

"Give you up! Now what kind of reviving fluid did Miss Lewis produce for you? What in the world are you talking about? Do you think you're any grand exception in not seeing your first operation through? Hum! Ask some of these nurses around here. Some of the doctors too, only they won't tell the truth. My first day in the dissecting room was a day of about thirty minutes. So you see you have plenty of company in your weak-mindedness."

She brightened then to the extent of looking willing to be comforted. "But it's humiliating, doctor, to think you're going to accomplish some big thing and then be absolutely overcome by a little incidental thing that doesn't happen to appeal to your senses. It's awful to have your senses get ahead of your soul like that," she laughed.

"Hum!"—Dr. Parkman had a "hum" all his own. "There's nothing unique in that experience, either. The spirit is willing, but the stomach is weak—to put it in exact terms. As a matter of fact, that's what life is made up of—having great purposes overthrown by minor inconveniences. Many a man can get hold of a great idea, but very few of them can stick by it through the things that make them uncomfortable. That's the reason most dreamers fail—they're not willing to come down out of the clouds and get to work at things that turn their stomachs!"

"Well, I'm not like that!" she flashed back at him.

"You? I know you're not. Some ancestor of yours gave you a big bump of stubbornness—for which you should look back to him with gratitude. Stubborn people aren't easily put out of the race. Now I'll tell you why I wanted you to come down here," he went on, more seriously. "I want you to see the thing just as it is. I want you to get the conception of it as a whole. I don't want you to become short-sighted. Some people look so much through the microscope that they forget how to look any other way. That's the difference between Karl and some of those fellows you're associated with now. That Willard and Lane and young Beason are the scientific kind, too abominably scientific to forge ahead. Don't lose sight of what you are doing. All these things you are doing now are simply a means to an end. You are to be one of the instruments employed—as you put it yourself one day—but make yourself such a highly-organised, responsive instrument that you're fairly alive with the idea yourself. See? That's where your real value will come in. You know,"—it was Dr. Parkman now who breathed the enthusiasm which draws one to a light out beyond obstacle and difficulty—"I'm beginning to see the thing more and more as actual fact. I caught the idea from the first, and then it seemed it simply had to be done because it was such a great thing to do, but I'm getting it more and more now just as a practical, matter-of-fact thing. And it isn't so far away,—not so very. You see, after all, Mrs. Hubers, you don't have to do it all. It would be stupid to set a race horse at a job that could be just as well accomplished by a plug. Any well-trained man can do certain things for Karl—but it's the touch of the artist—the things that make it real—it's making the blind man see—doing the impossible!—that's your work. Why, I can fairly see the whole thing," he went on—"Karl and you and some good assistant. He'll get both points of view then—he can't miss anything. The other fellow can give him certain technicalities you might miss—and then you'll turn in and bring it to his vision. A clear statement of facts could never make a blind man see. And then it will be your business to keep the spirit right—that's the real point, after all. Why, I can see it just as clearly as I could see that work to be done in there!"— pointing to the operating room.

It was another Ernestine now. She rose to it as the warrior to the trumpet call. He knew that the right word had been said.

"Now I don't think it will hurt you to see some of these operations," he went on, in more business like way. "Not only to help with observations for Karl, but—well, just to see it for yourself. Nothing will make this quite so real and vital to you as to see it actually breaking down human organisms, destroying life. I want you to get an eye for the thing as a whole:—see it as it is now, see the need of making it some other way. You must have more than a desire to help Karl—you must have an enthusiasm for the thing itself. You'll get so then that when you see an operation like this you won't see just some broken-down, diseased tissue that makes you feel weak-kneed, but you'll see something to get in and fight. Oh, it's a battle—so get your fighting blood up! Remember that you'll have to have enough for two. You know, what you must do for Karl is not only give him back the weapons with which to fight, but you must rouse his soldier's blood,—see what I mean?"

It was a joy to watch the response. He could see weariness and discouragement slipping from her as she spoke.

He was thinking to himself that she was superb, but aloud he said, "This is a good specimen in here. If you'll just come into the next room I'd like to go over it with you. I think I can make a few things clear."

She was radiant then, happy that he had so soon forgotten her first failure, appreciating his assumption that she was ready even now to go on with the fight.

"She will carry it through," thought Dr. Parkman, as he finally left the hospital. "And, by the good Lord, I believe that Karl Hubers is going to get back in the game and win! Nasty blow to the woman haters," he mused, as he looked in upon an office full of waiting patients,—"a very nasty blow."



CHAPTER XXVIII

WITH BROKEN SWORD

He wished that Ernestine would come home. He had let Ross go at four, and it was lonesome there alone. In spite of the fact that she was away so much, Ernestine was almost always there when he wanted her most. That was just one of the wonderful things about Ernestine. Something must have detained her to-day.

He reached over on the table for his copy of "Faust." It had become his habit to pick it up when he did not care to sit face to face with his own thoughts. It seemed to hold some word for everything in life. Its universality made it a good friend.

It was becoming easier to read with his fingers, but he had never come into the old joy in reading that there had been in the days when he could see it. And it seemed to him that there was an unnecessary clumsiness about the whole thing. He had worked out a little idea of his own for which he was going to have a model made. He believed it might help some—at any rate he had enjoyed working it out. "If a fellow feels like inventing, he simply must invent something, whether it amounts to anything or not," he had explained to Ernestine.

He did not read consecutively to-night, but just a line here and there, getting a little of wit, a little of philosophy, a dash or two of sarcasm, an occasional gleam of sentiment; he liked to take it that way at times like this; it seemed if not one thing, then surely another, must keep him from the things into which it would be so easy to slip to-night.

"Restless activity proves the man!"—several times his fingers went over that, and his responsive face told that to his mind it brought a poignant meaning, and to his heart an understanding and a sadness. He closed the book, and sat there thinking. He seemed very self-contained—quiet, poised, but the understanding eye would have known that he was thinking deep thoughts, facing hard truths.

Once at a horse race he had seen a horse which had just been lamed tied near the track. It heard the ringing of the gong, heard the music of the other horses' feet, heard, saw, smelled, sensed in every way the race that was going on. A weakness in one foot could not kill the spirit of a race horse. Tied there beside the track, watching others struggling for the race! He had wondered about that horse, then, had been sure from the quivering of its nostrils, the pawing of its foot, the passionate trembling of its whole superb body that it suffered. Thinking back to it to-night he had good reason to know that he had been right that day.

It was queer about life. In some ways so incomprehensively great and superb, and yet so easy to be overthrown. Great purposes seemed very great, but was a thing really great when it was so easily undermined? Was there not a dizzying instability about it all?

He smiled a little as he lighted his pipe. He seemed to be doing a great deal of speculating these days. What if he too were to be graduated into the bigger field of philosophy? But he shook his head, still smiling a little. If he ever entered the bigger field of philosophy he was sure he would not be carried there in other men's elevators, that he would not arrive in the jaunty, well-groomed state of Ross and his sort. No, if he ever found the bigger field of philosophy, it would be after he had scaled slippery crags and forded great rivers, after he had pushed his way through brambles and across sharp stones, after he had many times lost his footing, and had many times stopped to rest, believing he could go no farther. It was after some such quest that he might perhaps find his way up into the bigger field of philosophy. But he would not find Ross there. Ross and his fellows were down in a nice little garden that had been fixed up for them. That was it: the garden of philosophy,—a garden made by man, in which there were little artificial lakes and shrubbery set out in attractive designs. A very nice garden indeed, where the sun shone and where it was true pretty flowers would grow—but ah, one did not feel the wind upon one's face down in that sheltered garden as he believed one would feel it up there on the lonely heights to which one had climbed alone! And the garden of philosophy—he was smiling at his fancy, but it interested him—was electric lighted, while up there on the big wide sweep, one came very close to the stars.

What was philosophy, anyway? With Ross it seemed a matter of speaking the vocabulary of philosophers. It was so, he knew, with many men. And yet, as to the thing itself, it was not a mere learning a system of thought, acquiring the easy use of a peculiar kind of words. It was not fair, after all, to judge a thing by the people least fitted to understand it. Perhaps philosophy was conquering life. Perhaps it was learning to take life in good part, making up one's mind to write good text-books if it seemed certain the writing of text-books were to be one's part. Perhaps it was just holding one's place. The mere thing of holding one's place seemed a bigger thing now than it once had. He wondered. He was wondering about many things these days, and perhaps he had already scaled a crag or two, for he was able sometimes, in spite of the deep sadness of his face, to smile a little in his wonderings.

Ernestine was her sweetest self when she came in a little later. "I'm glad you were late," he said, after her affectionate protestations regarding her shortcomings, "you haven't been this nice for a long time."

She threw aside her hat and coat and took her favourite place on the low seat beside him. "Don't you remember, liebchen, how it was over there in Europe—after you'd treated me badly, you were always so nice, that I used to be quite tempted to make you be horrid?"

"I never was horrid to you," she protested.

"You're never horrid any more," he said, and, strangely enough, he said it sadly.

"Well, do you want me to be?"

"Yes! I wish you'd turn in once in a while and call me an old brute, and say you wished you'd never seen me, and didn't know how in heaven's name you were going to go on living with me!"

"Karl," she gasped—"are you going crazy?"

"No—at least I hope not. But you're just nice to me all the time, because—because I'm blind! I don't like it! I wish you'd swear at me sometimes!"

"Well, in the first place," laughing, but serious too,—it had come so heatedly, "it isn't my way to swear at any one. I never did swear at you. Why should I begin now?"

"Oh, swear was figurative language," he laughed.

"And of all things for a man to harrow up his soul about! Not liking it because his wife is never horrid to him!"

"It's not as crazy as it sounds. Are you and I a couple of plaster saints? Well, hardly! Then why don't we have any quarrels? It's just because you're sorry for me! I'll not have you being sorry for me!" he concluded, almost angrily.

But when she kissed him, he could not resist a smile. "You don't know much, do you, Karl? Don't you know that we don't quarrel about little things, because we've had so many big things on hand? We don't swear at each other, because—"

"Because we have so many other things to swear at," he finished for her.

"That's it. All our fighting emotion is being used up."

"Oh, you're such a genius for making things seem right! Now looking at it that way, I'm quite reconciled to your being nice to me. Still I want you to promise that if you ever feel like swearing, you will."

"I promise," she responded solemnly.

"Don't do things—or not do things—because you're sorry for me, Ernestine."

"We are 'sorry for' people who are unequal to things. I'm sorry with you, not for you, Karl."

"Ernestine,"—with an affectionate little laugh—"is there anything you don't understand?"

"You might play a little for me," he said after a silence. "Play that thing that ends in a question."

"Of Liszt's?"

"Yes; the one that leaves you wondering."

At first she had resented bitterly her not being able to play more satisfyingly. If only music were her work! It seemed an almost malicious touch that fate, in taking away Karl's own work, had also shut him out from hers. Resentment at that had made it hard for her to play for him at all, at first. But she had overcome that, and had been able to make music mean much to them both. They loved especially the music which seemed to translate for them things within their own hearts.

But to-night when Ernestine had left him pondering a minute the question he said Liszt always left with him, she turned, eagerly it seemed, to lighter things. She played a little Nevin, played it with a lightness, gladsomeness, he had never felt in her touch before. He said Nevin helped him to see things, that he could see leaves moving on their branches, could see the shadows falling on the hillsides where the cattle were grazing, as he listened to Nevin. But it did not bring the pictures to-night. It opened up new fears.

"Ernestine," he said abruptly, "come here."

"Are you ever frightened, Ernestine?" he asked of her, still in that abrupt, strange manner.

"Frightened—about what?"

"Frightened about having to live all your life with me!"

For a moment she did not answer. Then, her voice quiet with the quiet that would hold back anger: "Karl, do you think you are treating me very kindly to-night? Saying these strange things I cannot understand?"

"But, Ernestine—look here! You're young—beautiful—love life. Doesn't it ever occur to you that you're not getting enough fun out of things?"

"Karl,"—and there was a quivering in the voice now—"do you think I have been thinking lately about 'getting fun out of things'?"

"No, but that's just it! You ought to be thinking about it! Ernestine—think of it! How are you going to go on forever loving a blind man?"

For answer, she knelt down beside him, her arms about his neck, her cheek against his.

"Yes—I know—in that way. But in the old way of the first days? I was so different then. How can you love me now, the way you did then? What do I do now but sit in a chair and try to be patient? Look at a man like Parkman! That's life. Ernestine"—drawing her close, a sob in his voice—"liebchen,—can you?"

She longed to tell him then; it would mean so much to tell him now,—Karl was so troubled to-night. But the time was not ripe yet; she must not spoil it all. And so instead she talked to him of how real power comprehended more than activity, how depth of understanding, great things of the soul, were more masterful than those outer forces men called "life." Ernestine seldom failed in being convincing when she felt things as she now felt this.

"You always have the right word," he said at last. "You can always get ahead of the little blue devils."

"Oh, Karl," she murmured, very low, her heart too full to resist this—"some day I can show you better what I expect of life."

"Of course," he mused, after a silence, "you have your work."

"Yes," replied Ernestine, and something in her voice puzzled him, "I have my work."

He would have been startled could he have seen her face just then. For Ernestine was so happy to-night. She had come away from the hospital with a song in her heart; a song of resolution and of triumph. She had never foreseen the future so clearly; the time had never seemed so close at hand; it had never been this real before. Just in front of her as she sat there beside Karl was the Gloria Victis, that statue for which he had cared so little at first, but which in these later days she often found him dwelling upon with his hands in lingering touch of appreciation. To her the statue had come to hold many meanings; she looked at it now with shining eyes. Karl had held so tight to the broken sword—how splendid then that he should win the fight despite it all.

And she felt she had never risen so completely to the idea of Karl's greatness as she did to-day. What was there in the afternoon had meant so much to her? Was it actually seeing things as they were, or was it the things Dr. Parkman had said to point the way anew? There was to-night a new tide of appreciation, a larger understanding, more passionate response to this thought of Karl as greatest of them all. Looking at his face as he sat there in deep thought, she saw the marks of his greatness upon it just as plainly as she saw those other marks of his suffering.—This man stop work? Such as he out of the race?

She remembered the letters they had received when the news of his blindness had gone out. She had wept over them many times, but it seemed she had never grasped their significance before. They were from men of science, from doctors, from students, and from many plain people unknown outside their small communities, who wrote to say they were sorry. They had seen about him once or twice in the magazines, they said, or perhaps their own doctor at home had told them of him, and they were so interested because their wife or husband or mother had died of cancer, and they knew what an awful thing it was. It should have been some one whom the world needed less than it needed him, these plain people said.

Her eyes filled with a rush of tears. This was her Karl—he with whom all the world grieved! She recalled the editorials in the scientific papers, telling of the things he had done, the things it had been believed by them all he would achieve. This was her Karl!—this man whose withdrawal from active participation had been told of by great scientists everywhere as a world-wide calamity. How quiet and unassuming and simple he had been about it all—he whose stepping-out had been felt around the world!

And, now, some day before long she would come to him with: "Karl, I have found a new way of fighting with broken swords; take a good grip on the sword, a good strong grip, and let us turn back to the fight!"

She turned to him with that quick passionateness he loved in her so well. "I love you," she said, and though she had said it many times in other days, it had never sounded just like that before.



CHAPTER XXIX

UNPAINTED MASTERPIECES

Georgia was to be married. It was the week before Christmas, and on the last day of the year she would become Mrs. Joseph Tank. She had told Joe that if they were to be married at all they might as well get it over with this year, and still there was no need of being married any earlier in the year than was necessary. She assured him that she married him simply because she was tired of having paper bags waved before her eyes everywhere she went, and she thought if she were once officially associated with him people would not flaunt his idiosyncrasies at her that way. And then Ernestine approved of getting married, and Ernestine's ideas were usually good. To all of which Joe responded that she certainly had a splendid head to figure it out that way. Joe said that to his mind reasons for doing things weren't very important anyhow; it was doing them that counted.

Yesterday had been her last day on the paper. She had felt queer about that thing of taking her last assignment, though it was hard to reach just the proper state, for the last story related to pork-packers, and pork-packing is not a setting favourable to sentimental regrets. It was just like the newspaper business not even to allow one a little sentimental harrowing over one's exodus from it. But the time for gentle melancholy came later on, when she was sorting her things at her desk just before leaving, and was wondering what girl would have that old desk—if they cared to risk another girl, and whether the other poor girl would slave through the years she should have been frivolous, only to have some man step in at the end and induce her to surrender the things she had gained through sacrifice and toil. As she wrote a final letter on her typewriter—she did hate letting the old machine go—Georgia did considerable philosophising about the irony of working for things only to the end of giving them up. She had waded through snowdrifts and been drenched in pouring rains, she had been frozen with the cold and prostrated with the heat, she had been blown about by Chicago wind until it was strange there was any of her left in one piece, she had had front doors—yes, and back doors too, slammed in her face, she had been the butt of the alleged wit of menials and hirelings, she had been patronised by vapid women as the poor girl who must make her living some way, she had been roasted by—but never mind—she had had a beat or two! And now she was to wind it all up by marrying Joseph Tank, who had made a great deal of money out of the manufacture of paper bags. This from her—who had always believed she would end her days in New York, or perhaps write a realistic novel exposing some mighty evil!

"Ah, well—it's all in the day's work!"—she had been saying that to herself as she covered her typewriter, and then, just as she was fearing that her exit would be a maudlin one, Joe called up to say that he did not think it would be too cold for the machine, and why not spin out somewhere on the North Shore for a good dinner? Now that had been nice of Joe, for it tided her over the good-byes.

To-day she was engaged in the pre-nuptial rite of destroying her past, indulging in the letter destroying ceremonial which seems always to attend the eve of matrimony. It was so that Ernestine found her when she stopped on her way from the university that afternoon.

Mrs. McCormick was sewing yards upon yards of lace on something when Ernestine came in. "She's right in there," she said, referring to Georgia in a sepulchral tone which might fittingly have been employed for: "The remains have been laid out in the front room."

Georgia herself, though not sepulchral, was subdued. "My, but I'm glad you've come," she said, brushing aside several hundred letters that Ernestine might have a place to sit down. "I'm having the most terrible twinge of conscience."

"Why, what about?"

Georgia pointed to the clock. "Think of my not being at the office! I ought to be hanging around now for an afternoon assignment."

"You'll get over that," Ernestine assured her, cheerfully.

"Oh, I suppose so. One gets over everything—even being alive. Meanwhile, behold me,"—with a great sweep of her arms—"surrounded by my blighting past."

"That one looks like Freddie Allen's writing," said Ernestine, giving an envelope at her foot a little shove.

"It is," said Georgia, with feeling; "yes—it is. Poor Freddie—he was such a nice boy."

"I suppose he's nice still," observed Ernestine.

"Oh, I suppose so. I'm sure I don't know. He's way back there in the dim past."

"Well, do you want him up here in the sunny present?" Ernestine inquired, much entertained.

"No, oh no—if I had wanted him I would have had him," with which reversion to the normal Georgia they laughed understandingly.

She shook herself free of the dust of her past then, piled up the pillows and settled herself on the bed. "But we had some good times back there in the dim past, didn't we, Ernestine?"

"Some of them were good times," replied Ernestine, a little soberly.

"Of course our college life would have been happier if we had been able to pull down that sophomore flag. I've always thought Jack Stewart might have done a little better with that. But as long as we kept Jim Jones away from every party in his junior year, perhaps we should be satisfied." Georgia sighed heavily. "And it is a joy to think back to your telling the dean he didn't have the courage of his convictions when he let them fire Stone for heresy. Oh there are a good many things to be thankful for. You always had lots of nerve when it came to a show-down. You looked so lady-like, and yet you really weren't at all."

"Well, I don't know whether I like that or not."

"I mean not so lady-like that it interfered with anything you wanted to do. You'd speak up in the pleasantest, most agreeable voice and say the most dreadful things. I'll never forget the day you told "Prof" Moore in class that you had always had a peculiar aversion to the Pilgrim Fathers."

"I always did," Ernestine said fervently.

"Then one day when we had spent an hour trying to tell what Shakespeare meant by some line you said you thought quite likely he put it in just because there had to be another line. And "Prof" Jennings conditioned you on the whole year's work—remember?"

"I have reason to," laughed Ernestine.

"The funny part of it was that you never seemed to think you were saying anything startling. Like the day you contended in ethics that you thought frequently it was better to be pleasant than truthful. Kitty Janeway was so shocked at that. I wonder if Kitty Janeway is any happier with her second husband than she was with her first?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Ernestine in a rather far-away voice.

"I'll send all the girls cards," said Georgia, and again she sighed heavily. "The cards are going to look very nice," she added, a little more hopefully.

"Ernestine?"—after a little pause.

"Yes?"

"You and I are hanging right over the ragged edge of thirty."

"Horrors!—Georgia; is this your idea of furnishing pleasant entertainment for a guest?"

"But I was just thinking how many things have happened to us since we were twenty-two."

"I was thinking of that a minute ago myself."

"To you, especially. Now, I never supposed when we were in college that you were going to marry Karl Hubers."

"No," laughed Ernestine, "neither did I."

"I mean I never associated you two with one another. And now I can't think of you separately. And then your father and mother, and then Karl losing—heavens, but I'm cheerful! Now, isn't it just like me," she demanded, angrily, "to act like a fool just because I'm going to be married? If I keep on I'll find myself weeping because Socrates is dead. And I never do weep, either. I tell you that Joe Tank's a terrible man," she laughed, brushing away some tears.

"I don't think you're going to have much to weep about, Georgia. I know you're going to be happy."

"Well, if I'm not it won't be Joe's fault. Unless it is his fault on account of its not being his fault. What I mean is that good-natured people are sometimes aggravating."

"Oh he'll not always be good-natured," she reassured her.

Ernestine said then that she must go, and was standing at the door when Georgia burst forth: "Oh Ernestine—I'm so glad I remembered. You really must go down to the Art Institute and see those pictures by that Norwegian artist—I shouldn't dream of pronouncing his name. They go away this week, and it would be awful for you to miss them."