A wistfulness, fairly pain, revealed itself for an instant in Ernestine's face. And then, as if coming into consciousness of the look: "I know," she said briefly. "I read about them. I've been—thinking about it. I did see some of them in Europe, but of course I should love to see them again."

"I wish you would, my dear; perhaps"—a little fearfully—"they'd make you feel like getting to work yourself. Ernestine,"—gathering courage—"it's awful for you to let your work go this way. Every one says so. I was talking to Ryan the other day—you know who he is? He asked all about you, and if you were doing anything now, and when I told him I was afraid not he fairly flew into a rage, said that was just the way—the people who might be great didn't seem to have sense enough to care to be."

That brought the quick colour. "Perhaps Mr. Ryan does not understand everything in life," she said, coolly.

"Now, Ernestine—he was lovely about you. Would he have shown any feeling at all if he didn't care a great deal for your work? Does any one fly into a rage at my not painting? He said you were one American woman who was an artist instead of 'a woman who paints.' It seems he saw the Salon picture. Oh, he said beautiful things about you."

Ernestine did not answer. She was standing there very quietly, her hand on the knob. "Now, Ernestine," Georgia went on, after the manner of one bound to have it out, "I've tried all winter to cultivate repression. I don't know what it is you are trying to do over there in the laboratory. You asked me to do two things—not to ask you about it, and not to mention it to Karl. I haven't done either, but I want to tell you right now if you have any idea of giving up your own work I think it's time for your friends to inquire into your mental workings! The very fact you don't want Karl to know about it shows you know very well he won't think it's right. Anything that relates to his work can be done by people who do that kind of work a great deal better than you can. Really, Ernestine, the thing is positively fanatical. And anyway,"—this with the air of delivering the overpowering—"I don't think it is at all nice the way you are taking other men into your confidence and deceiving Karl."

She met that with a little laugh. "Dear me—what laudable sentiment. I've always heard there was no one half so proper as the girl about to be married. Never mind, Georgia,"—a little more seriously, a little as if it would not be hard to cry—"Karl will forgive me—some day."

"But, Ernestine, I want you to work! Can't you see how awful it is for you not to—express yourself?"

"I am going to express myself," she answered, lightly enough, but after she had gone Georgia wondered just what she had meant by that.

She decided, when she came out of the apartment building, that she would take a little walk. It was just cold enough to be exhilarating, and she felt the need of something bracing. She was wishing as she walked along very fast, responding to the keen, good air, that Karl were with her now. Karl did not exercise enough, and when he did yield to her supplications and go for a walk with her he did not seem to enjoy it as she wished he might. "After a while, liebchen," he would say. "I'll be more accustomed to things after a while. And meanwhile there's plenty of fresh air right here in our back yard." "But it isn't just getting the fresh air," she would protest, "it's enjoying it while you're getting it."—"Wait till spring comes," he would sometimes answer. "I'm going to get out more then."

When she saw she was near one of the stations of the Illinois Central she stopped, a little confused. Could it be she had meant all the time to come here? Looking to the south, she saw that at the next station, not three blocks away, the train which would take her to the city in ten minutes was just arriving. The Art Institute was only two blocks from the Van Buren Street station;—those facts associated themselves quickly in her mind. She looked at her watch: not quite three. Karl had said he would be busy with Mr. Ross until five. She stood there in hesitation. She had seen no pictures since—oh it was too long ago to remember. What harm could it do her? And anyway—this with something of the uprising of the truant child—it was Christmas time! Every one else was taking a vacation, why—but here it was all swept into the imperative consciousness that she had no time to lose, and she was at the ticket window before she was quite sure that she had made up her mind.

It was all so strange then; exhilaration mounted high for a little while, but there followed a very tense excitement. She tried to laugh at herself, contend that she was coming for enjoyment, relaxation, that it was absurd to go to pieces this way; but things long suppressed called for their own, and the man to whom she gave her admission fee wondered for a long time after she had passed him just what it was about her seemed so strange.

How good it was! How good to be back among her own kind of things! In the laboratory every one knew more than she did; there she was repressed, humble even, gratefully accepting the crumbs of knowledge falling from their tables. It was good to feel for a little while that she was some place where she knew a great deal about things. She wished Mr. Willard or Mr. Beason would happen along that she might give them some insight into the colossalness of their ignorance.

She turned down the corridor leading to the room where she would find the special exhibit. She stopped before many of the pictures—reverting to that joy of the spirit in dominance. There was exultation, almost rapture, in this quick, firm rush of understanding; deep joy in just knowing the good from the bad.

But when she reached the pictures she had come to see it was different. She walked to the middle of the room, and in one slow sweep of glance, punctuated with long pauses, took them in. And she responded to them with a warm, glad rush of tears.

They fell upon her artist's soul as the very lovely rain upon the thirsty meadow. They drew her to them as the mother the homesick child, and like the homesick child, back at last after weary days, she knew only that she had come home. In this first overflowing moment there was no thought of colour—brush work—this or that triumphant audacity; it was a coming to her own, a home-coming of the spirit—the heart's passionate thankfulness, the heart's response.

A few minutes of reverent pause, a high delight, deep response, and then—the inevitable. Clear as a bell upon the midnight air was that call from soul to kindred soul. Assurance and longing and demand possessed her beyond all power to stay. The work she stood before now called to her as naturally and inevitably as the bird to its mate, as undeniably as the sea to the river, as potently as spring calls upon earth for its own, as autumn calls to summer for harvest time.

It frightened her. It seemed something within her over which she had no control. It surged through her as far beyond all reason as the tides of the sea are beyond the hand of man. It was procreative power demanding fulfillment as the child ready for birth demands that it be born.

She was conscious of some one's having come into the room. That her face might not be seen she turned away and sat down before one of the pictures. She was quivering so passionately that it seemed almost impossible to hold herself within command.

The girl who had come in was moving restlessly from one picture to another; at last she walked over and sat down on the seat by Ernestine.

"I think I like this one best," she said, abruptly, nodding to the picture before them.

Ernestine nodded in reply. She was not sure what would happen were she to speak. The girl she supposed to be one of the students there.

"I would give anything in the world—just anything in the world—if I could do it too!"

At the passion of that she turned quickly and looked at the girl. In spite of the real feeling of her tone a fretful look was predominant in her face.

"Do you—work hard?" she asked, merely to relieve the pause.

"Work—yes; but mere work won't do it. I can't do anything like this,"—it was in bitterness she said it.

"Very few can, you know," murmured Ernestine.

"Yes—but I want to! I don't care anything about life—I don't care anything about anything—if I can't paint!"

It struck her immediately as so entirely wrong. She looked at the girl, and then again at the pictures. All the great things they conveyed were passing her by. She missed the essence of it. The greatness of the work merely moved her to anger because she was not great herself. It was an attitude to close the soul.

"But you should care for life," she said, in her very gentle way. "Do the best you can with your own work, but work like this should, above everything else, make you care for life."

The girl moved impatiently. "You don't understand. I guess you are not an artist," and she rose and went away.

Ernestine smiled a trifle, but the strange little interview had opened up a long vista. The girl represented, in extreme measure, but fundamentally, the professional attitude. Most artists saw work in relation to themselves. Pictures were either better or worse than they could do. They came to the great things like these, seeking something, usually some mechanical device, to take away to their own work. She could see so plainly now the shallowness of that.

Her own mood had changed,—broken. Perhaps it was the consciousness that she too had been seeing it in relation to herself, or it may have been but natural reaction. The big uprising was dying down; the heat of the passion had passed; it was all different now, and in the wake of her brimming moment there came the calm that follows storm, the sadness of spirit which attends the re-enthronement of reason, but also the understanding, far-seeingness, which is the aftermath of great passion like that.

There had come to her, as she sat there beside the girl, a throbbing determination to do both things. The thought had come before, but always to be banished. It came now with new insistence just because anything else seemed so impossible. There had never come, even to the outermost edge of her consciousness, the thought of giving up the work she was going to do for Karl. Her hardest hour had never even suggested the possibility of surrender. Her love had seen its way; her life had been consecrated. But now, when it seemed no longer within her power to deny the work for which she had been ordained, it seemed that to fulfill both things was the one thing possible. But in this after-moment of unblurred understanding she saw she could do both things only by taking from the things she gave to Karl. It would mean giving her soul to the one, and what she had left to the other. And she knew that she could never do what she meant to do for Karl unless she gave everything within herself to that cause. The chief aim of her struggle in the laboratory had not been to acquire knowledge and usefulness—that she could do, she knew; her real aim had been to give to Karl's work the things she had always given to her own. With a divided soul she could do no more for him than any other assistant. She was seeking to give him herself. Oh no—it was simple enough; she had no thought of offering Karl an empty vessel.

Her mind saw it all, her will never wavered, but the bruised, conquered spirit quivered under the pain. A long time she sat there, and as the hour went by a strange thing happened. The pictures were healing the spirit which they had torn. As they had first moved her to the frenzy for achievement, had then left her with the pain of relinquishment, they were bringing her now something of the balm of peace. How big they were!—first passion, then pain, then understanding, now strength.

Ernestine came in that hour to see a great truth. It was something she worked out for herself, something taught her by life and her own heart, and that is why it reached her soul as it could never have done had she but read it in books. She came to see that the greatest thing in life was to be in harmony with the soul of the world. She came into the understanding that to do that, one need not of necessity paint great pictures, one need not stand for any specific achievement, one need only so work out one's life that one made for harmony and not for discord. The greatest thing pictures could do was to draw men into this world harmony. These pictures were great because they reached the soul, and she came to see, and this is what few do see, that the soul which is reached is not less great than the soul which has spoken. She too could have been one of the souls to speak; she accepted that in the simplicity with which we receive the indisputable, but it was good to think that she would not have failed utterly in fulfilling herself, if at the end, no matter through what, she made for harmony, and not for discord.

She grew so quiet then: the quiet of deep understanding. A long time she sat before a picture of light out beyond some trees. Oh what a world—with the light coming through the trees like that, and men to see it, and make it seen! She wished Karl might see these pictures; she looked at them with a new intentness,—she would tell Karl all about them; he would be so glad she had come.

She rose to go. Once more she looked around at the pictures, and to her eyes there came a dimness, and to her spirit a deep and tender yearning. There would be joy in having done such work as this. But there were other things! To work out one's life as bravely and well as one knew how, to do what seemed best, to be faithful and unfailing to those who were nearest one, to be willing to lay down one's life for one's love,—perhaps when the end of the world was reached, and all things translated in terms of universal things, to have done that would itself mean the painting of a masterpiece. Perhaps the God of things as they are would see the unpainted pictures.



CHAPTER XXX

EYES FOR TWO

"This day smells as though it had been made in the country," Karl said, leaning from the dining room window which Ernestine had thrown wide open as she rose from the breakfast table.

"Yes, and looks that way," she responded, leaning out herself, and taking a long draught of the spring.

"Let's take a walk," he said abruptly.

"Except when you asked me to marry you—you never proposed a more delightful thing," she responded with gayer laugh than he had heard for a long time.

"Suppose we walk down through the park and take a look at the lake," he suggested.

"I call that a genuine inspiration!"—losing no time in getting Karl's things and her own.

Nothing could have pleased her more than this. It seemed beginning the spring right.

"I can fancy we are in Europe," he said, after they had gone a little way, and she laughed understandingly;—this seemed closer to the spirit of the old days than they had come for a long time.

Her guiding hand was on his arm, but more as if she liked to have it there, than as though necessary. "Your little finger could pilot me through Hades" he said, lovingly, gratefully, as a light touch told him of a step to go down, and again she laughed; it was very easy to laugh this morning.

The winter, full of hard things for them both, had gone now, and spring, as is spring's way, held promise. In the laboratory they no longer treated Ernestine with mere courteous interest. That day in December when she went down to Dr. Parkman's operation had marked a change. Since then there had been a light ahead, a light which shed its rays down the path she must go.

What did it matter if she were a little stupid about this or that, if Mr. Beason was unconsciously rude or Mr. Willard consciously polite? For she knew now—and did anything matter save the final things? With her own feeling of its not mattering their attitude had seemed to change; she became more as one with them—she was quick to get that difference. "You're arriving on the high speed," Dr. Parkman had assured her when he visited the laboratory a few days before.

So she knew why she was happy, for added to all that was it not a glorious and propitious thing that Karl felt like taking a walk? Did it not argue a new interest in life—a new determination not to be shut off from it? And Karl—why did he too seem to feel that the spring held new and better things? Was it just the call of spring, or did Karl sense the good things ahead? Could it be that her soul, unable to contain itself longer, had whispered to his that new days were coming?

"Why, even a fellow on his way to the penitentiary for life would have to get some enjoyment out of this morning," he said, after they had stood still for a minute to listen to the song of a bird, and had caught the sweetness of a flowering tree.

"And oh, Karl," she laughed, joyously, "you're not on your way to the penitentiary for life."

"No," he said, and he seemed to be speaking to something within himself rather than to her,—"I'm not!"

They had reached Jackson Park, and sat down for a little rest before they should wend their way on to the lake. "Oh, Ernestine," he said, taking it in in long breaths, feeling the dew upon his face, and hearing the murmur of many living things,—"tell me about it, dear. I want to see it too!"

"Karl—every tree looks as though it were just as glad as we are! Can't you feel that the trees feel just as we do about things? The leaves haven't all come out yet, some of them are holding themselves within themselves in a coy little way they have—although intending all the time to come out just as fast as ever they can. And it's that glorious, unspoiled green—the kind nature uses to make painters feel foolish. Oh, nature's having much fun with the painters this morning. Right over there,"—pointing with his finger—"is such a beautiful tree. I like it because all of its branches did not go in the way they were expected to go. Several of them were very perverse children, who mother trunk thought at one time were going to ruin her life, but you know lives aren't so easily ruined after all. 'Now you go right up there at an angle of twenty-two degrees,' she said to her eldest child. 'Not at all,' said the firstborn, 'I intend to lean right over here at whatsoever angle will best express my individuality.' And though the mother grieved for a long time she knows now—Karl—how foolish we are! But listen. You hear that bird who is trying to get all of his soul into his throat at once? He's 'way up there on the top branch, higher than everything else, and so pleased and proud that he is, and he's singing to a little blue cloud straight above him, and I tell you I never saw such blue—such blue within blue. Its outside dress is a very filmy blue, but that's made over an under dress of deeper blue, and there's just a little part in it where you can see right into the heart, and that's a blue so deep and rich it makes you want to cry. And oh, Karl—the heart itself has opened a little now, and you can get a suggestion, just a very indefinite suggestion—but then all inner things are indefinite—that inside the heart of the cloud is its soul, and you are permitted one fleeting glimpse to tell you that the soul of the cloud is such a blue as never was dreamed of on land or on sea."

"I can see that cloud," he said,—"and the bird looking up at it, and the tree whose eldest child was so perverse and so—individual."

"And, Karl," she went on, in joyous eagerness, "can't you see how the earth heaved a sigh right here a couple of hundred centuries ago—now don't tell me the park commissioners made them!—and that when it settled back from its sigh it never was quite the same again? It was a sigh of content—for the little slopes are so gentle. Gentle little hills are sighs of content, and bigger ones are determinations, and mountains—what are mountains, Karl?"

"Mountains are revolutionary instincts," he said, smiling at her fancifulness—Ernestine was always fanciful when she was happy.

"Yes, that's it. Sometimes I like the stormy upheavals which change the whole face of the earth, but this morning it's nice to have just the little sighs of content. And, dear—now turn around and look this way. You can't really see the lake at all—but you can tell by looking down that way that it is there."

"How can you tell, liebchen?" he asked, just to hear her talk.

"Oh, I don't know how you can. It's not scientific knowledge—it's—the other kind. The trees know that the lake is there."

"Let's walk down to the lake," he said. "I want to feel it on my face. And oh, liebchen—it's good to have you tell about things like this."

As they walked she told him of all she saw: the people they met, and what she was sure the people were thinking about. Once she laughed aloud, and when he asked what she was laughing at, she said, "Oh, that chap we just passed was amusing. His eyes were saying—'My allowance is all gone and I haven't a red sou—but isn't it a bully day?'"

"There's no reason why I should be shut out from the world, Ernestine," he said vigorously, "when you have eyes for two."

"Why, that's just what I think!" she said, quickly, her voice low, and her heart beating fast.

The shadows upon the grass, the nursemaids and the babies, the boys and girls playing tennis, or just strolling around happy to be alive—she could make Karl see them all. And as they came in sight of the lake she began telling him how it looked in the distance, how it seemed at first just a cloud dropped down from the sky, but how, upon coming nearer, it was not the stuff that clouds are made of, but a live thing, a great live thing pulsing with joy in the morning sunshine. She told him how some of it was blue and some of it was green, while some of it was blue wedded to green, and some of it too elusive to have anything to do with the spectrum. "And, dearie—it is flirting with the sunlight—flirting shamefully; I'm almost ashamed for the lake, only it's so happy in its flirtation that perhaps it is not bothered with moral consciousness. But it seems to want the sunlight to catch it, and then it seems to want to get away, and sometimes a sunbeam gets a little wave that stayed too long and kisses it right here in open day—and isn't it awful—but isn't it nice?"

In so many ways she told how the lake seemed to her—how it seemed to her eyes and how it seemed to her heart and how it seemed to her soul, how it looked, what it said, what it meant; what the clouds thought of it, and what the sunlight thought of it, what the wind thought of it, what the dear babies on the shore thought of it, and what it thought of itself. She could not have talked that way to any one else, but it was so easy for her heart to talk to Karl's heart. One pair of eyes could do just as well as two when hearts were tuned like this!

And then, when she did not feel like talking any more, they stood there and learned many things from the voice of the lake itself. "Ernestine," he said, when they turned from it at last, "it seems to me I never saw Lake Michigan quite so well before."



CHAPTER XXXI

SCIENCE AND SUPER-SCIENCE

"Insubordinate children who play off from school in the morning must work in the afternoon," Karl said at luncheon, and they went to their work that afternoon with freshened spirit.

When the McCormicks gave up their flat at Christmas time, Beason had come to live with the Hubers. Ernestine prided herself upon some cleverness in having rented two rooms without Karl's suspecting it was a matter of renting the rooms. When he engaged Ross as his secretary in the fall she said it would be more convenient for them all for Mr. Ross to have his room there. They had an extra room, so why not? She did not put it the other way—that she felt the house more expensive than they should have now. Of course Karl would make money in his books—that had been settled in advance, but things had changed for them, and Ernestine felt the need of caution. Then as to Beason, she said there was that little room he could have, and it would do the boy good to be there. "You like John," she said to Karl, "and as he has not yet been graduated into philosophy, he may be more companionable than Mr. Ross." And Karl said by all means to have Beason if it wouldn't bother her to have him around.

She was glad of that for more reasons than a reduced rent; Beason had become a great help to Ernestine. After he came there to live they fitted up some things for her in her studio, and she managed to get in a number of extra hours when Karl thought she was busy with her pictures.

In her glow of spirit this afternoon—that walk in the park had meant so much as holding promise for the future—Ernestine was even willing to admit, looking back upon it, that the winter had not been nearly so bad as one would suppose. Mr. Beason and Mr. Ross were both, in their differing ways, alert and interesting, and there had been some good wrangles around the evening fire. Other people had found them out, and they had drawn to them an interesting group of friends. So the days had flowed steadily on, a brave struggle to meet life in good part, keep that good-fellowship of the spirit.

One of the hardest things of all had been deceiving Karl. Her reason justified it, but it hurt her heart. They had been able to do it, however, better than she would have believed possible. Mr. Ross was with him most of the time when she was not, and had frequently been forced to intercept some caller who was close to an innocent remark about Mrs. Hubers being over at the university. Several times Karl had caught the odour of the laboratory about her, and she had been forced to explain it as the odour of the studio; and more than once, in the midst of a discussion, her interest had beguiled her into some surprisingly intelligent remark, and she had been obliged to invent laughing reasons for knowing anything about it. It hurt her deeply to take advantage of Karl's blindness in keeping things from him, even though the motive was all love for Karl, and determination to help. She would be so glad when all that was over, and she thought as she worked along very hard that afternoon that perhaps it would not be many days now until Karl should know.

That would be for Dr. Parkman to say; so many vital things seemed left to Dr. Parkman. "Did you ever think," she said, turning to Mr. Beason, who was busy at the table beside her, "what the doctor really counts for in this world?"

"Yes—in a way," said Beason, adjusting his microscope, "but then I never was sick much."

"Well, I didn't mean just taking one's pulse," she laughed. "It seems to me they mean more than prescriptions. For one thing, I think it's rather amusing the way they all practice Christian Science."

"Why—what do you mean?" he demanded, aroused now, and shocked.

"Oh, I've come to the conclusion that a modern, first-class doctor is a Christian Scientist who preserves his sanity"—she paused, laughing a little at Beason's bewildered face, and at the thought of how little her formula would be appreciated in either camp. "I've noticed it down at Dr. Parkman's office," she went on. "It's quite a study to listen to him at the telephone. He will wrangle around all sorts of corners to get patients to admit something is in better shape than it was yesterday, and though they called up to say they were worse, they end in admitting they are much better. He just forces them into saying something is better, and then he says, triumphantly, 'Oh—that's fine!'—and the patient rings off immensely cheered up."

"That's a kind of trickery, though," said Beason.

"Pretty good kind of trickery, if it helps people get well."

"Well I shouldn't care to be a practicing physician," Beason declared, "just for that reason. That sort of business would be very distasteful to me."

Ernestine was about to say something, and then relegated it to the things better left unsaid; but she permitted herself a wise little smile.

"I don't think it's such an awfully high grade of work," he went on. "In a way it is—of course. But there's so much repetition and routine; so much that doesn't count scientifically at all—doesn't count for anything but the patient."

"But what is science for?" she demanded, aggravated now. "Has medical science any value save in its relation to human beings?"

"Oh yes, I know—in the end," he admitted vaguely.

"All this laboratory work is simply to throw more power into the hands of the general practitioner. It's to give him more light. It's just because his work is so important that this work has any reason for being. Dr. Hubers saw it that way," she concluded, with the air of delivering the unanswerable.

"But even that wasn't just what I meant," she went on, after they had worked silently for a few minutes. "What I was thinking about was the superdoctor."

Beason simply stared.

"No, not entirely crazy," she laughed. "For instance: what can a man do for nervous indigestion without infusing a little hope? Think of what doctors know—not only about people's bodies, but about their lives. Cause and effect overlap—don't they? Half the time a run down body means a broken spirit, or a twisted life. How can you set part of a thing right when the whole of it's wrong? How can a doctor be just a doctor—if he's a good one?"

But nothing "super" could be expected of Beason. His very blank face recalled her to the absurdity of getting out of focus with one's audience.

She herself felt it strongly. It seemed to her that Dr. Parkman's real gift was his endowment in intuition. When all was going well she heard nothing from him; but let things begin to drag, and the doctor appeared, rich in resources. He seemed to have in reserve a wide variety of stimulants.

He looked in upon them often. Whenever in their neighbourhood he stopped, and though frequently he could not so much as take time to sit down, the day always went a little better for his coming. "If the end of the world were upon us, Dr. Parkman could avert the calamity for a day or two—couldn't he, Karl?" Ernestine had laughed after one of his visits.

This proved to be one of the days of his stopping in, and he arrived just as Karl was dictating a few final sentences to Mr. Ross. While they were finishing—he said he was not in a hurry today—he took a keen look at Karl's face. His colour was not good—the doctor thought; in fact several things were not to his liking. "Too many hard times with himself," he summed it up.—"Droopy. Needs a bracer. Needs to get back in the harness—that's the only medicine for him."

He had been thinking about that very seriously of late. Ernestine was at least in position now to show the possibilities of the situation, and working with Karl would do more for her in a month than working along this way would do in five. Why not? No matter how long they waited it was going to be hard at first. The deep lines in Karl's face furnished the strongest argument against further waiting.

"What have we here?" he asked, picking up one of the embossed books lying open on the table near Karl.

"I presume that's my Bible," Karl replied.

"Has it come to this?" the doctor asked dryly.

"Didn't we ever tell you the story of my Bible?"

"No. You never did. I never suspected you had one."

"Oh yes; the Bible was the first book of this sort I had. It was sent to me by some home missionary society, some woman's organization—"

"Fools!" broke in Parkman.

"They saw in the paper about my eyes and so they said to themselves—'Now here is a good chance to convert one of those ungodly scientists.' So they sent the Bible along with a nice little note saying that now I would have time to read it, and perhaps all of this was the hand of God leading me—you can construct the rest. Well." he paused with a laugh—"Ernestine was mad."

"I should hope so!" growled Parkman.

"She was so divinely angry that in having fun with her I overlooked being enraged myself. Oh, if I could only give you any idea of how incensed she was! I think she intended notifying the Chicago police. Really I don't know to what lengths she would have gone had it not been for my restraining influence. And then she constructed a letter. It was a masterpiece—I can tell you that. She compared me to them—greatly to their disadvantage. She spoke of the various kinds of religious manifestation—again greatly to their disadvantage."

"Did she send it?" laughed the doctor.

"No. I persuaded her that well-intentioned people should receive the same kindly tolerance we extend to the mentally defective. The writing of the letter in itself half way contented her—it was such a splendid expression of her emotions. Poor old girl," he added musingly, "she was feeling pretty sore about things just then."

"But the sequel is the queer part," he went on. "I began to read their Bible, and I like it. It's part of the irony of fate that I haven't gotten from it the things they intended I should; but I tell you part of this Old Testament is immense reading. You know, Parkman, I suppose we're prejudiced ourselves. We don't see the Bible as it is itself. We see it in relation to a lot of people who surround it. And because we don't care for some of them we think we shouldn't care for it. Whereas the thing in itself," he concluded cheerfully, "is just what we'd like."

"And how go your own books?" Dr. Parkman asked him.

Karl shrugged one shoulder in a nervous little way he had acquired. "Oh—so, so. Pretty fair, I guess." His face settled into a gloom then, but almost immediately he roused himself from it to say, in a voice more cheerful than spontaneous: "They'll be finished in a couple of weeks. I'm both glad and sorry. Don't know just what I'll go at then."

Again he seemed to settle into the gloom which the doctor could see was ever there waiting to receive him. But again he roused himself almost immediately. Was it this way with the man all the time? A continuous fight against surrendering? "But I'm mighty thankful I've had the books," he said. "They've pulled me through the winter, and they've enabled me to make a living. Lord, but a man would hate not to make a living!" he concluded, straightening up a trifle, more like the Karl of old.

The sheer pathos of it had never come home to the doctor as it did with that. A man who should have stood upon the very mountain peaks of fame now proudly claiming that he was able to make a living! But if it brought home the pathos of the situation it also brought new sense of the manhood of Karl Hubers. It was great—Parkman told himself—great! A man who felt within himself all the forces which make for greatness could force himself into the place of the average man, and thank the Lord that he was able to make a living!

"Here's a little scheme I've worked out," Karl said, and opening one of the drawers of the library table, pulled out the model for the idea he had worked out for reading and writing in Braille.

It was the first Dr. Parkman had heard of it; he wanted to know all about it, and Karl explained how it had seemed to him as soon as he learned how the blind read and wrote that the thing could be simplified and vastly improved. So he had worked this out; he explained its points of difference, and wanted to know what Parkman thought of it.

"Why, man," exclaimed the doctor, "it strikes me you've revolutionized the whole business. But—why, Karl—nobody ever thought of this before?"

"The usual speech," laughed Karl.

"But in this case it seems so confoundedly true."

"Well I believe it will help some, and I'll be glad of that," he added simply. "Oh I have some more schemes. If I've got to be blind I'm going to make blindness a better business."

"Our old friend the devil didn't do so well then after all," said Dr. Parkman quietly. "He closed up one channel, but he didn't figure on your burrowing another."

Karl laughed. "Oh this won't worry him much; it came so easily I can't think it amounts to a great deal. But as long as I was used to scheming things out it—amused me, exercised a few cells that were in pretty bad need of a job. And I have other ideas," he repeated.

Parkman asked what Karl intended to do with his model, offering some suggestions. The doctor was more than interested and pleased; he was deeply stirred. "Why, confound the fellow," he was saying to himself,—"they can't knock him out! They knock him down in one place, and he bobs up in another!" The ideas of this brain were as difficult to suppress as certain other things in nature. Dam up one place—they find another.

They smoked their cigars and talked intermittently then; they were close enough together to be silent when they chose. And all the while the undercurrent of Dr. Parkman's thought flowed steadily on.

He was thinking that after all there were better things to do with fate than damn it. If ever a man would seem justified in spending his soul in the damning of fate, that man, it seemed to him, was the friend beside him. And while he had done some of it, perhaps a great deal more than any one knew, it had not been his master-passion. His master-passion had been to press on—press on to be knew not what—there was the glory of it! It was easy enough to work toward a goal sighted ahead; but it took a Karl Hubers to work on through the darkness.

And ah, there was a good time coming! The doctor's sombre face relaxed to a smile. His own life seemed almost worth living now just because he had been able to take a hand—yes, and play a few good cards—in this little game. Those things Karl had shown him today made it seem there was all the finer joy in bringing him back to the things which were his own. He had been thrust from out the gates, but he had not sat whimpering outside the wall. He had gone on and sought to find a place in that outer world in which he found himself. And now he should come back to his own through gates of glory.

Karl asked him about Ernestine then. How was she looking; was she thin—pale? Her face felt pale to him, he said. He had urged her to work, because he knew she would be happier so, but Parkman must see to it she did not overwork. Had he seen the picture on which she was working so hard? He asked that wistfully; and the doctor's face was soft, and a gentleness crept into his voice as he said he believed he was to see the great picture very soon now. And then, after a silence, Karl said, softly, very tenderly—"Bless her gamey little heart!"



CHAPTER XXXII

THE DOCTOR HAS HIS WAY

It was in response to the doctor's telephone message that Ernestine went down to his office one afternoon a few days later. Dr. Parkman had been detained at the hospital, they told her, but would be there very soon, and so she sat down in the waiting room, which was already well filled. Were there always people there waiting for him—and did they not sometimes grow impatient and want to find a doctor who would not keep them waiting so long?

The woman sitting near her looked friendly, and so she asked: "Don't you get very tired waiting for Dr. Parkman?"

"Oh, yes," sighed the woman, "very tired."

"Then why don't you go to some doctor who would attend to you more quickly?" she pursued, moved chiefly by the desire to see what would happen.

The woman stared, grew red, and replied frigidly: "Because I do not wish to."

All the other patients were staring at Ernestine, too. "Why don't you do that yourself?" asked a large woman with a sick-looking small boy.

"I guess if there was anything much the matter with you, you'd be willing to wait," said a pale woman with a weary voice.

And then a man—she was sure that man was a victim of cancer—said loftily: "A doctor you never have to wait for isn't the doctor you want."

"The only thing seems queer to me," said a meek looking woman, taking advantage of the outbreak, "is that he don't look at your tongue. Down in Indiana, where I come from, they always look at your tongue. There's a lot of questions he don't ask," she ventured, looking around for either assent or information.

"He asks all there's any need of," the first woman assured her. "I guess you aren't very sick," turning, witheringly, to Ernestine.

And then they went back to their waiting; those who had rocking chairs rocking, those who had magazines reading, or turning leaves at least, some just sitting there and looking into space. It must take away all sense of freedom to feel that people like this, sick people for whom everything was hard, were always waiting for one.

She would tell the doctor how she had been well-nigh mobbed by loyal patients. They were like a great family; she knew well enough they did considerable grumbling, but her remark put her without the fold, and from her as an alien, criticism was not to be brooked. By the glare with which the first woman still regarded her she was sure she was suspected of being an agent sent there by some inferior doctor to try and get Dr. Parkman's patients away from him.

Ernestine was tired, and she believed she would have to admit that she was nervous. She had been working harder, she supposed, than she should, but the further she went the more she saw to do, and something from within was eternally pushing her on.

As she waited, her mind turned to the stories that office must hold. How much of anxiety and suffering and sorrow and tragedy—and occasional joy—it must know. The mothers who brought children whom others had declared incurable—how tense these moments of waiting must be for them! The husband and wife who came together to find out whether she would have to have the operation—how many of the crucial moments of life were lived in such places as this! The power in these doctors vested! The power of their voice, their slightest glance, in holding men from the brink of despair! Who could know the human heart better than they? They did not meet the every day men and women well groomed with restraints and pretence. For it was an hour when the soul was stripped bare that the doctor looked in upon it. Men were various things to various people, but to the doctor they came very close to being themselves. Too much was at stake to dissemble here. When phantoms of fear and death took shape in the shadows one sought the doctor—and told the truth.

She had a fancy which moved her then. She saw the men like Dr. Parkman fighting darkness down in the valley, while from the mountain peak adjacent men like Karl turned on, as with mighty search-lights, more, and ever more, of the light. And what were the search-lights for if not to be turned down into the valley?

"What time did you go to bed last night?" he demanded, after they had shaken hands in the inner office.

"Why—did you see the light?" she faltered;—she had made a promise against late hours.

"The light—no; but I see your face now, and that's enough. Was it two—or worse?"

"Just a mere trifle worse. And truly, doctor—I didn't mean to. But don't you know it's hard to stop when you feel just right for a thing? Why, one can't always do things at the proper time," she expostulated.

"No, and one can't always keep an abused nervous system from going to pieces either. Did you ever stop to think of that?"

"But you'll look after the nervous system," she replied ingenuously.

"Now that's where a lot of you make the mistake. I can't do anything at all without the cooperation of common-sense."

"Well I'm intending to be real good from this on," she laughed. "But it is so important that I know everything!"

He laughed then too. "A very destructive notion."

"Tell me," he said, when he had settled himself in his chair in the particular way of settling himself when he intended having a talk with her, "have you been rewarded in all this by any pleasure in it whatsoever? I don't mean," he made clear, anticipating her, "just the pleasure of doing something for Karl. But has your work given you any enthusiasm for the thing in itself?"

"Doctor—it has. And that was something I was afraid of. But you should have heard me talking to Mr. Ross the other day when he made one of his patronising remarks about mere science. I believe that when you work hard at almost anything you develop some enthusiasm for it."

"Um—a rather doubtful compliment for science."

"It was rather Beasonish," she laughed. "But you see in the beginning my face was turned the other way."

He gave her one of those concentrated glances then. "And how about that? Never feel any more like heading the other way?"

She smiled, and the smile seemed to be covering a great deal. "Oh sometimes the perverse side of me feels like turning the other way. There are many sides to us—aren't there? But never mind about that," she hastened. "That is just something between me and myself. I can suppress all insurrections."

There was a pause. She leaned back in the big chair and was resting; he had seen from the first that she was very tired. "No desire to back out?"—he threw that out a little doubtfully.

She sat up straight. She looked, first angry, and then as if she were going to cry. "Doctor—tell me! Am I that unconvincing? Hasn't the winter—"

"This winter," he interrupted gently, "has proved that you knew what you were talking about when you came to me last fall. Could I say more than that? I only asked the question," he explained, "because this is the last chance for retreat."

And then he told her, watching the changing expressions of her responsive face. But at the last there was a timidity, a sort of frightened fluttering.

"But doctor—am I ready? Can I really do it? There is so much I don't know!"

"The consciousness of which is excellent proof of your progress. My idea is this. In any case it is going to be hard at the first. You might go on another year, and of course be in better shape, but I don't know just what Karl would be doing in that year; he's in need of a big rousing up, and as for you, after working the year with him, you'll be a long way ahead of where you would be alone. So it argues itself that way from both standpoints. I made up my mind when I was out the other day that Karl needs just what this is going to give."

"You think he looks badly?" she flew at that, relinquishing all else. "You think Karl's not well?"

"I didn't mean that. But he needs the hope, the enthusiasm, activity, this is going to give."

"Hasn't he been splendid this winter?" she asked softly, those very deep warm lights in her eyes. "Did you ever see anything like it, doctor?"

"I thought I knew something about courage," he replied shortly, "but Karl makes me think I didn't."

"I don't believe there are many men could turn from big things to smaller ones, and grow bigger instead of smaller," she said, with a very tender pride.

"They say scientists are narrow and bull-headed. Wonder what they would say to this? And there's another thing to remember. We have seen the results of the victories. Only Karl Hubers knows of the fights."

"I know of some of them," said Ernestine, simply.

"Yes," he corrected himself—"you. And before we quite deify Karl we must reckon with you. He could not have done it without you."

"He would not have tried," she said—and the man turned away. That look was not his to see.

When she recalled herself it was with a sense of not having been kind. Why did she say things like that to Dr. Parkman after Karl had told her—? "And you, doctor," she said in rather timid reparation, "I wonder if you know what you have done for us both?"

"Oh, I haven't counted for much," he said almost curtly. "It would have worked itself out without me." But even as he spoke he was wishing with all his heart that there was some way of showing her what they had meant to him. He did not do it, for a soul which has been long apart grows fearful of sending itself out, fearful of making itself absurd.

They talked it all out then, going at practical things in a very matter-of-fact way. "And now," said the doctor, "I have a suggestion. It is more than a suggestion. It is a request. A little more than a request, even; a—"

"Command?" she smiled at him.

"You know," he began, "how it is with the athletes. Sometimes they become overtrained, which is the worst thing could happen to them. A good trainer never puts overtrained men in the game. Now, my dear enthusiastic friend,"—she was looking at him in that intent way of hers—"I've noticed two or three times that you've about jumped out of your chair at some meaningless noise in the other room. Your eyes tell the story;—oh there are various ways of reading it. You're a little overtrained. Before you tell Karl the great secret I want you to go away by yourself for a couple of weeks and rest."

"You mean that I should leave Karl?" she demanded.

"I do. I want you to have change, rest, and for that matter a little lonesomeness won't be a bad thing. You'll be in just the right mood then to put it all to him when you come back. He'll be in just the right mood to take it."

"Oh, but, doctor—you don't understand! I can't leave Karl. There are things I do for him no one else could do. Why you must remember he's blind!" she concluded, passionately.

She was not easy to win, but he stated his case, and one by one met her arguments. Yes—Karl would be lonely. But when she came back he would be so glad to see her that he would be a much better subject for enthusiasm than he was now. She also would be in better mood. "If you tell him now," he said, "and he makes some objections, says it can't be done—ten to one, as you are now, you will begin to cry. A nice termination for your whole winter's work! You must go to him just as you came to me in the beginning—overwhelm him, take him whether or no. And you're not right for that now. It's just because I'm bound this thing shall go through, that I insist you do as I say."

"Couldn't Karl go with me?" she asked, quite humbly, her eyes pleading eloquently.

He showed her, kindly, but very decisively, that that would not make the point at all. There followed then but a few final protestations. Where would Karl think she was? What in the world would he think of her—going away and leaving him like that? Who would look after him? What if he needed some help he didn't get? Suppose he grew so lonesome and depressed he just couldn't stand it?

On all of which points he somewhat banteringly reassured her. Other men had been lonesome now and then, and it had not quite killed them. Beason and Ross were in the house, and there was a good maid, who adored Dr. Hubers. "As to where he thinks you are, I'll tell him half the truth. That you are a little nervous and I have prescribed change and rest."

But she would not agree to that. "Karl would worry," she said. "We'll tell him instead that I have to go to New York to see about my picture. It will be easier for Karl if he thinks it is about my work."

He yielded to her judgment in that, and agreed to the further compromise that if she found she could not possibly stay away two weeks she might come back in one.

It was the change, the going away, the getting lonesome the doctor wanted most of all. He wanted to lift her clear up to her highest self that she might have all that was hers to give when she told her story to Karl.

"And of course, doctor," she asked anxiously, "when the time comes you will talk to him too—tell him you feel I can do it?"

"Trust me for that," he said briefly.

"But where is it I am to go?" she laughed, as she was ready to leave.

He told her then of a place in Michigan. An old nurse of his had married and was living there, and he frequently sent patients to her as boarders. "I have written to her and she wants you to come," he said.

"Well—upon my word! Before I so much as said I would go?"

"Why certainly," he answered, looking a trifle surprised. "For three days, perhaps five, I want you to sleep. You'll find you're very tired—once you let go. Then you can walk in the woods—I think it's going to be warm enough for browsing around. And you can think of Karl," he said with a touch of humour, and a touch of something else, "and of all this is going to mean. I've thought a great many times of what you said about the statue. There's something mighty stirring in that idea of unconquerableness."

"There is!" she responded.

"A great thing, you know, is worth making a few sacrifices for. You've made some pretty big ones for this, now make this one more. Haven't you been laying claim to great faith in my judgment?"

"Oh yes—as a matter of judgment; only—"

"Very well then, be lonesome—if you must be lonesome. I hope you will be—it's part of the treatment. And then you'll come back and in your first bursts of delight tell Karl just what you've done. When he says it's impossible, you'll just laugh. You'll get him to try and then the day is yours."

Out on the street she stopped half a dozen times in the first block, thinking she would go back and tell Dr. Parkman she couldn't possibly leave Karl. "Why, he's a terrible man," she mused, half humorously, half tearfully, "sending wives away from husbands like this—wanting people to be lonesome, just because he thinks it's good for them! I'll not do it—I'll go back and tell him I won't!" But she did not go back. She felt Dr. Parkman might look unpleasant if a patient came back to say: "I won't."—"No one would ever get up courage enough for that," she concluded mournfully, "so I'll just have to go."



CHAPTER XXXIII

LOVE'S OWN HOUR

It was Sunday, and Ernestine was going away next morning. She had told Karl the day before; it alarmed him at first, for he telephoned Dr. Parkman, asking him to come out. When the doctor arrived he demanded the truth as to Ernestine. Had anything happened? Was she not well? He was so relieved at the doctor's assurance that Ernestine was perfectly well, and was going away because of her work, that he accepted the situation more easily than she had anticipated. "Perhaps it will do me good, liebchen," he told her. "I fear I'm getting to be a selfish brute—taking everything for granted and not appreciating you half enough."

But that afternoon it was Ernestine herself who was forced to fight hard for cheerfulness. She did not want to go away. She was curiously depressed about it, and resentful. More than once she was on the point of telephoning to Dr. Parkman that she could not leave Karl.

Georgia and Joe and Mrs. McCormick came in about five and Georgia's spirit seemed to blow through the house like a strong, full current of bracing air. She and Joe had returned from California the night before, and there were many things to tell about their trip. Mrs. McCormick said it was indeed curious how some people always had so many more adventures than other people had. She wondered why it was she never met any of these amusing persons Georgia was always telling about.

Their visit did Ernestine much good. It was impossible to feel blue or have silly forebodings in the presence of so much naturalness and cheer as always emanated from Georgia. Those hearty laughs had cleared the atmosphere for her.

"Look here, liebchen," said Karl, emerging from a brown study, "we must fix up a code."

"A code, dear?"

"For your writing to me. You see Ross will have to read the letters, and how can you say in every other line you love me, with that duffer reading it out loud?"

"Oh, Karl—how stupid of me not to learn writing the other way! You see it never occurred to me I would be away from you. Couldn't I take that manual, and make it out from that?"

"Well—you might, but we'll do both; it will be fun to have a code. Now, when you say—'I am a trifle tired,' you mean—'Oh, sweetheart, I am so lonesome for you that I am never going away again!'"

"But won't Mr. Ross think it strange if I say in each letter that I am a trifle tired?"

"What do we care what he thinks? They're not his letters, are they? And when you say—'New York seems most attractive,'—you mean—'Oh, dearest, I never dreamed I loved you so much! I am finding out in a thousand new ways how much I care, and never, never, shall we be separated again.'"

"And when I say, 'I send you my love'—it will be perfectly proper for Mr. Ross to read that, I mean—'Dear love—I send you a thousand kisses, and I would give the world for one minute now in your arms.'"

And so they arranged it,—revising, enlarging, going over it a great many times to have it all certain—there was such a tender kind of fun in it. As to the other side of it, Karl of course could write to her on his typewriter.

It was a beautiful evening they had sitting there before the fire. She saw pictures for him, and he even saw some pictures for her,—he said a blind man could see certain pictures no one else could possibly see. They spoke of how they had never been separated since their marriage, of how strange it would seem to be apart, but always of how beautiful to be together again. There was such a sweetness, tenderness, in the sadness which hung about their parting. They made the most of their pain, as is the way of lovers, for it drew them together in a new way, and each kiss, each smallest caress, had a new and tender significance.

"You'll be back in time for your birthday, Ernestine?"

"Oh, yes; I'm only going to stay a week."

"I thought you said, perhaps two?"

"Did I? Well I've decided one will be enough."

"Ernestine, what have you been painting? Tell me, dear. That's one thing I'm a little disappointed in. I do so want to keep close to your work."

"Well, Karl," after a silence, "that picture I have been working on this winter is hard to tell about because it is in a field all new to me. It is a picture which emphasises, or tries to, what love means to the world,—a picture which is the outgrowth of our love. I am not sure that it is good in all its technical features, but I believe there is atmosphere in it, poetic feeling, and, back of that, thought, and soul, and truth. I think there is harmony and richness of colour. Some people will say it is very daring, and no one will call it conventional, but I am hoping,"—Ernestine's voice was so low and full of feeling he could scarcely get the words—"that it is going to be a very great picture—the greatest I have ever done. Some of it has been hard for me, dear. In truth I have been much discouraged at times. But great things are not lightly achieved, Karl, and if this is anything at all, it is one of the great things. As to the subject, detail, I am going to ask you to wait until I come back. I have been keeping it for you as a little surprise. Perhaps it will help some of your lonely hours, dear"—her voice quivered—"to think about the beautiful surprise. And if it seems strange sometimes that I could bring myself to go away from you, will you not bear in mind, Karl dear, that I am doing it simply that the great surprise may be made perfect for you? It is a whim of mine to keep this a great secret; in the end I know you will forgive the secrecy. And when I come back"—her voice was stronger, fuller now—"I am going to make you see it just as plainly as you ever saw anything in all your life!"

"You must! I couldn't bear it to be shut out from your work."

"You are not going to be shut out from my work!"—she said it with an intensity almost stern.

"I want your life to be happy, Ernestine," he said, after a time, and the words seemed to have a new meaning spoken out of this mood of very deep tenderness. "I don't want it to be darkened. I want my love to make you happy—in spite of it all."

"It does," she breathed,—"it does."

"But I want you to be—as you used to be! I haven't been fair in letting this make such a difference with us."

"Karl—how can you talk like that, when you have been so—splendid?"

"But you see I don't want to be splendid," he said whimsically. "I'd rather be a brute than be splendid. And I want you to love me always as you did at first—just because you couldn't help yourself."

"I can not help myself now," she laughed. "I am just as helpless as I ever was."

And then a long and very precious silence. She was filled with many things too deep for utterance, even had she been free to speak. She thought of her birthday night a year before, their happiness then, all that had come to them since, all that love had meant, the great things it was to do for them. She looked at Karl's face—his fine, strong face which seemed the very soul of the mellow fire-light. How would that dear face look when she told him what she had done? Convinced him that great things were before him now? Would it not be that his determination not to fail her would stir fires which, even in his most triumphant days, had slumbered?

But from exultation in all that, she passed to the heart's pain in leaving him. She moved a little closer, took his hand and rested it lovingly against her cheek. She had never been away from Karl. Tears came at the thought of it now.

And he must have been thinking of what Ernestine had meant to him in the last year, for of a sudden he stooped down and with his old abandonment, with all the fullness of the first passion and the tender understanding of these later days, gathered her into his arms. "Oh, Ernestine," he whispered—breathing into her name all that was in his heart—"Ernestine!"



CHAPTER XXXIV

ALMOST DAWN

She found that in the beginning at least it was as Dr. Parkman had said. It was good to sleep. It was good to go to bed at night with the sense of nothing to do in the morning, good to wake at the usual time only to feel she might go back to that comfortable, beautiful sleep. For Ernestine was indeed very tired. Since that day when the great idea had come to her there had been no time when she was free from the sense of all that lay before her. But now she could rest.

Strangely enough she did not worry greatly about Karl. Her first waking thoughts were of him, but fuller consciousness always brought the feeling that it was all right with Karl; he was missing her, of course, but she was going back to him very soon and bring him the things he had believed shut away forever;—bring him the light!—that was the way she had come to think of it. The deliciousness of her rest was in the sense of its being right she should take it; she could best serve Karl by resting until she was her strongest self.

Her room was so quiet and restful, the bed so comfortable, and Mrs. Rolfe, Dr. Parkman's old nurse, so good to her. It was soothing to be told to close her pretty eyes and go to sleep, sustaining to be met with—"Now here is something for our little lady to eat." After many days of responsibility it was good to be "mothered" a little.

But after the first revel in sleep had passed she did a great deal of languid, undisturbed thinking. She seemed detached from her life, and it passed before her, not poignantly, but merely as something to look upon, quietly muse about. Soon she would step back into it, but now she was resting from it, simply viewing it as an interesting thing which kept passing before her.

From the very first it came before her, from those days when she was a little girl at home, and she found much quiet entertainment in trying to connect herself of those days with herself of the now. "Am I all one?" she would want to know, and in thinking that over would quite likely fall asleep again.

She thought a great deal about her father and mother; they were more real to her than they had been for a long time; but it was hard to connect the Ernestine of that home with the Ernestine who belonged to Karl. There was Georgia, to be sure, who extended clear through. Dear Georgia—how well she had looked Sunday in that beautiful black gown. She remembered such a funny thing, and such a dear thing, Georgia had done once. They had become chums as freshmen and when they were sophomores Georgia came to their house to live, and one night she inadvertently said something which started one of those terrible arguments, and ended in the saying of so many bitter things that Ernestine could not bear it—especially before Georgia, and as soon as she could she left the table and went up to her room. She did not cry, her mother cried so much that it seemed enough for the family, but she sat there very still looking straight ahead—denying herself even the luxury of tears. And then, just when that atmosphere of unhappiness and bitterness seemed pressing down upon her—crushing her—there had come a wild shriek from Georgia—"Ernestine—Ernestine—get your things quick—let's go to the fire!"

That was not to be resisted even by a nineteen-year-old girl. She remembered tumbling into her things, running two blocks, and then gasping—"Where is it?" and Georgia replied, gasping too—"Don't know—small boys—said so." And then after running all over town they found there was no fire at all, and that had so overcome them with laughter that she forgot all about those other things which would have given her so miserable an evening. She had had just a little suspicion then, and now she had a firm conviction, that Georgia never heard small boys say anything about fire that night. Bless Georgia's big heart—she loved her for just such things as inventing fires for unhappy people to go to.

As she lay there resting, away from the current of her life, she thought a great deal about a little grave over in France, such a very, very small grave which represented a life which had really never come into the world at all. She could fancy her baby here with her now—patting her face, pulling her hair—so warm and dear and sweet. Her arms ached for that little child which had been hers only in anticipation. And what it would have meant to Karl!—the laughter of a very small voice, the cuddling of a very small head.... Deep thoughts came then, and deeper yearnings, and when Mrs. Rolfe came in at one of those times she was startled at the look in the deep brown eyes of her patient, a look which seemed to be asking for something which no one could give, and when Ernestine smiled at her, as she always did, the woman could scarcely keep back the answering—"Never mind, dearie—never you mind."

And through all of her thoughts there was Karl—his greatness, his work, his love. She would be so happy when she did not have to keep things back from Karl. It seemed it would be the happiest moment of her life when she could throw her soul wide open to him with—"There is never going to be another thing kept back from you!" She could not bear the thought of Karl's believing she was in New York. But soon there would be no more of that, and Karl himself would tell her she had done it because she cared so much.

And most beautiful of all things to think about was the hour when she would tell him! How would he look? What would he say?

On the fifth morning she awakened feeling quite different. Those birds!—What were they singing about? She got up and raised the curtain, and then drew in a long breath of delight. For it was a radiant spring morning, breathing gladness and joy and all beautiful things. Oh how beautiful off there in the trees!—the trees which were just coming back to life after their long sleep. She too had been asleep—but it was time now to wake up and be glad!

She felt very much awake and alive this morning.—Oh, how those birds were singing! She laughed in sheer happiness, and began to sing too. She would dress and go out of doors. To remain in her room one hour longer would be unbearable bondage. For all the world was awake and glad! She could scarcely wait to get out there among the birds and trees.

She had never felt so alive, so well tuned to life, so passionately eager for its every manifestation as when, after a hurried breakfast, she started up the beautiful green hill to the trees where all the birds were singing—the soft breath of the spring enfolding her, her spirit lifting itself up to meet the caress of the spirit of spring. She walked with long, swinging step, smiling to herself, humming a glad little air, now and then tossing her head just to get the breath of spring upon her face in some new way. Mrs. Rolfe watched her from the kitchen door, smiling.

On the hill-top she stopped, standing straight, breathing deep, revelling in the song of the birds—they were fairly intoxicated with joy at this morning—listening to the soft murmur of the spring beneath it all—happy—oh so happy, as she looked off to the far distances. The long winter had gone, and now the spring had come again—the dear spring she had always loved!

It was with her too almost an intoxication—the throwing off of gloom, the taking on of joy. On such a morning nature calls unto her chosen, and they hear her call, and are glad. As she stood there on her hill-top her spirit lifted itself up in lyric utterance; her whole being responded to the songs of the returning birds.

How well Dr. Parkman had planned it! She would go back now and tell Karl what a great thing it was to be alive, how the spirit was everything, and could conquer all else. It seemed very easy now. It was all a matter of getting the spirit right;—how good of Dr. Parkman to think it out like this.

But there was something a little wrong. She stopped for a minute, pondering. Now she knew! Karl!—why could he not be here too? All in an instant she saw it so clearly that she laughed aloud. She was rested now—ready to tell him—and this the place! She would send for him! Mr. Ross—or perhaps the doctor himself—would come with him, and here where it was all so beautiful, where the call of the spring reached them and made them glad—she would tell him! And then, his spirit strong as hers was now strong, he would respond to it, be made ready for the fight.

How simple and how splendid! How stupid not to have thought of this before! And then again she laughed. It would be fun to improve on Dr. Parkman's idea. That was all very well—but this a thousand times better. Karl's spirit too needed lifting up;—what could do it as this? It was true he could not see it with his eyes—but there were so many other ways of being part of it: the singing of the birds, the scent of the budding trees, the rich breath of spring upon one's face. And even the vision should not be lost to him. She would make him see it! She would make him see the sunlight upon the trees, the roll of that farther hillside—one did not need to try to forget the park commissioners here!—and then she would say to him: "See, Karl—even as I can make you see the trees and that little brook there in the hollow, just as plainly as I can make you see the sky and the hill come together off there—so plainly will I make you see the things in the laboratory which belong with your work." She would prove to him by the picture she drew of these green fields in spring-time that she could make plain to him all he must see. How glorious to prove it to him by the spring-time!

And then, both of them uplifted, gladdened, both of them believing it could be done, loving each other more than they had ever done before, newly assured of the power of love, they would go back and with firm faith and deep joy begin the work which lay before them.

She turned to walk back to the house. She would send a telegram to Dr. Parkman that Karl must come. Perhaps he could be here to-night;—to-morrow, surely. Dear Karl—who needed a vacation more than he? Who needed the rejuvenation of the spring as Karl needed it?

She had walked but a little way when she stopped. Someone was coming toward her, walking fast. Had the sun grown a little dim—or was something passing before her eyes? The world seemed to darken. She looked again at Mrs. Rolfe, coming toward her. How strange that she shivered! Was it a little chilly up here on the hill-top where a minute before it had been so soft and warm? She wanted to go to meet Mrs. Rolfe, but she did not; she stood strangely still, waiting. And why was it that the figure of Mrs. Rolfe was such a blur on the beauty of the hillside?

But when at last she saw her face she did run to meet her. "What is the matter?"—her voice was quick and sharp.

The woman hesitated.

"Tell me!" demanded Ernestine. "I will not be treated like that!"

"Dr. Parkman wants you to come home," the woman said, not looking Ernestine in the face.

"Why?—Karl?"—she caught roughly at the other woman's arm.

She knew then that she could not temporise nor modify. "Dr. Hubers was taken sick yesterday. He was to have an operation. The telegram should have been delivered last night."

She thought Ernestine was going to fall—she swayed so, her face went so colourless, her hands so cold. But she did not fall. "That—is all you know?"—it came in hoarse, broken whisper.

And when the woman answered, yes, Ernestine started, running, for the house.



CHAPTER XXXV

"OH, HURRY—HURRY!"

That train!—She would go mad if it kept stopping like that. She kept leaning forward in her seat, every muscle tense, fairly pushing the train on with every nerve that was in her. Never once did she relax—on—on—it must go on! She would make it go faster! When it stopped she clenched her hands, her nails digging into the flesh—and then when it started again that same feeling that she, from within herself, must push it on. At times she looked from the window. Now this field was past—they were so much nearer. Soon they would be over there where the track curved—that was a long way ahead. They were going faster now. She would lean forward again—pushing on, trying through the straining of her own nerves to make the train go faster.

Mrs. Rolfe had wanted to come with her, but she said no. It seemed she could get there faster by herself. There had been an hour's wait for the train; it made her sick, even now, to think back to that hour. At least this was doing something, getting somewhere. She had telegraphed to every one she could think of, but no reply had come up to the time the train started. She reasoned that out with herself, now for good, now for bad. And then—if he were better, if there were anything good to tell—

Her temples were thumping more loudly than the train thumped. Her heart was choking her. Her throat was so tight she could not breathe. Again and again she went over it to herself. Dr. Parkman had operated on Karl. Of course Dr. Parkman would do it right. He would not dare to operate on him without her being there unless he was absolutely sure it would be all right. And then close upon that—he would have waited for her if—

Appendicitis—that was what those quick operations were. And most of them—especially with Dr. Parkman—came out all right. And Karl was the doctor's best friend! Would not a man save his best friend when he could save every one else? And Karl himself—his will, his power, his love for her—why Karl would know that nothing must happen while she was away! But close upon that came awful visions—Oh why had Dr. Parkman sent her away and then done this thing? She would tell him when she got there—she would tell him—

It would all be right when she got there. If only the train would hurry! There was smoke off there. Was it?—It was the smoke of Chicago! Nothing had ever looked so beautiful before. Very soon now! Why, perhaps within a few hours she and Karl would be laughing at this! "Isn't it great the way I got on, liebchen?" he would say. "Isn't Parkman a dandy?"

They were passing those houses on the outskirts. Oh why was Chicago so big! But she must be calm—very calm; she must not excite Karl in the least. How sorry he would be that she had been frightened like this! They were passing larger buildings, coming closer to the city. She gritted her teeth hard, clenched her hands.

Karl was at the hospital—the telegram told that. She would get off at the stop just this side of the main station—that was a little nearer the hospital, she believed. She would take a cab—if only there were an automobile!—but the cabman would surely go very fast if she told him why she had to hurry like this.

Long before the train came to its stop she was standing at the door. She would not have waited for the standstill if the porter had not held her back. Oh how she must hurry now!

She ran to the nearest cabman. Would he hurry very fast?—faster than he ever had before? It was life and death, it was—"Yes—yes, lady," he said, putting her in. "Yes, I understand. I'll hurry."

"But faster," she kept saying to him—"oh please, faster!"

She saw nothing either to the right or left. She saw only the straight line ahead which they must travel. And still everything from within her was pushing her on—oh if the man would only hurry!

A big building at last—the hospital. Only two blocks now, then one, and then the man had slowed up. She was out before he stopped, running up the steps—somebody in the hospital would pay—and up the stairs. The elevator was there—but her own feet would take her faster.

"Dr. Hubers?—Where is he?" she said in choked voice to a nurse in the hall.

The nurse started to speak, but Ernestine, looking ahead, saw Dr. Parkman standing in the door of a room. She rushed to him with outstretched hand, white, questioning, pleading face. Her lips refused to move.



CHAPTER XXXVI

WITH THE OUTGOING TIDE

He simply took her into the room, and there was Karl—alive. That was all she grasped at first; it filled her so completely she could take in nothing else. He was lying there, seemingly half asleep, looking much as he always did, save that of course it was plain he was very sick. She stooped down and kissed him, and his face lighted up, and he smiled a little. "Ernestine," he murmured, "did they frighten you?"

It was as she had known! His thought was of her. And oh how sorry Karl would be when he was quite well and she told him all!

She nestled her head close to him, her arm thrown about him. The tears were running down her cheeks. Of the blessedness of finding Karl here—breathing, smiling upon her, sorry she had been frightened! She took his hand and it responded to her clasp. That thrilled her through and through. Those awful fears—those never-to-be-forgotten fears—that Karl's hand might never close over hers again! She leaned over him that she might feel his breath upon her face. In all her life there had never been so blessed a joy as this feeling Karl's breath upon her cheek. Nothing mattered now—work, eyes, nothing. She had him back; she asked nothing more of life. What could anything else matter now that those awful fears had drawn away? She was sobbing quietly to herself. Again his hand closed over hers.

Then something made her look up, and at the foot of the bed she saw Dr. Parkman. One look at his face and she grew cold from head to foot; her throat grew painfully tight; strange things came before her eyes. She could not move. She simply remained there upon her knees, looking at Dr. Parkman's face, her own frozen with terror.

The doctor came to her, took her hands, and helped her to rise. Two nurses and another doctor were bending over Karl—doing something. Dr. Parkman led Ernestine into an adjoining room.

She did not take her eyes from his face; the appeal, terror, in them seemed to strike him dumb. It was as though his own throat were closed, for several times he tried vainly to speak.

"Ernestine," he said at last, "Karl is very sick."

"How—sick?" she managed to whisper.

"How—sick?" she repeated as he stood there looking at her helplessly.

And, finally, he said, as if it were killing him to do it—"So sick that—"

"Don't say that!"—she fairly hissed it at him.

"Don't dare say that! You did it—you——" And then, sinking down beside him, catching hold of his hand, she sobbed out, wildly, heartbreakingly—"Oh, Dr. Parkman—oh, please—please tell me you will save Karl!"

Her sobs were becoming uncontrollable. "Ernestine," he said, sharply—"be quiet. Be quiet! You have got to help."

The sobs stopped; she rose to her feet. He pulled up a chair for her, but she did not sit down. A few sobs still came, but her face was becoming stern, set.

"Tell me," she said, holding her two hands tight against her breast, and looking him straight in the face.

And then he jerked it out. Karl had been taken ill—pain, fever, he feared appendicitis. He had two other doctors see him; they agreed that he must be operated on immediately. They brought him here. They found—conditions awful. They did all that surgery could do—every known thing was being done now, but—they did not know. He had rallied a little from the operation; now he seemed to be drooping. He was in bad shape generally,—heart weakened by the shock of his blindness, intestines broken down by lack of exercise, whole system affected by changed conditions—all these things combined against him. He told the short story with his own lips white, swaying a little, seeming fairly to age as he stood there.

Her face had been changing as she listened. He had never seen a human face look as hers did then; he had never heard a human voice sound as hers sounded when she said: "Dr. Parkman, you are mistaken." She looked him straight in the eye—a look which held the whole force of her being. "I say you are mistaken. We will go back in here now to Karl. You and I together are going to save him."

There was the light from higher worlds in her eye as she went back, in her voice a force which men have never named or understood. And something which emanated from her took hold of every one who came into that room. There was more than the resources of medical science at work now.

On her knees beside the bed, her arm about him, passionately shielding him from the dark forces around him, her face often touching his as if reassuring him, Ernestine spoke to Karl, quietly, tenderly, forcefully, love's own intuition telling her how much to say, when to speak. By her warm body which loved him, by her great spirit which claimed him, she would hold him from the outgoing tide. Her voice could rouse him where other stimulants failed; the only effort he made was the tightening of his hand over hers, and sometimes he smiled a little as he felt her close to him.

Two hours went by; the lines in Dr. Parkman's face were deepening. They worked on unfalteringly—hypodermics, heat, rubbing, oxygen, all those things with which man seeks to deceive himself, and for which the foe, with the tolerance of power, is willing to wait. But their faces were changing. The call of the outgoing tide, that tide over which human determination has not learned to prevail, was coming close. They worked on, for they were trained to work on, even through the sense of their own futility.

Looking about her Ernestine saw it all, and held him with a passionate protectiveness. If all else failed, her arms—arms to which he had ever come for help and consolation—could surely hold him! The cold fear crept farther and farther into her heart, and as it crept on her arms about him tightened. Not while she held him like this! Oh not while she held him like this!

And then a frenzy possessed her. That she should sit here powerless—weeping—despairing, surrendering, while Karl slipped from her! She must do something—say something—something to hold him firm—call him back—make him understand that he must fight!

Suddenly a light broke over her face. She looked at Dr. Parkman, who was bending over Karl. "I will tell him," she whispered—"what I did—the secret—about the work."

He hesitated; medically his judgment was against it; and then, white to the lips with the horror of the admission he faced the fact that this had passed beyond things medical. Let her try where he had failed. Through a rush of uncontrollable tears he nodded yes.

And she did tell him,—in words which were not sentences, with sharp flashes of thought—such flashes as alone could penetrate the semi-consciousness into which she must reach; after a moment of pause in which to gather herself together for the great battle of her life, with concentration, illumination, with a piercing eloquence which brought hot tears to every cheek, and deep, deep prayers to hearts which would have said they did not know how to pray—a woman fighting for the man she loved, human love at its whitest heat pitted against destiny—she told him.

"Karl," at the last—"you understand?—That's the great secret!—That's the great picture! I've not painted one stroke this winter! I've been working for you—working in your laboratory every day—studying day and night—getting ready to be your eyes—going to give you back your work—oh, Karl—Karl—won't you—" but the sobs could hold back no longer.

She had reached him. He took it in, just a little at first, but comprehension was growing, and upon his face a great wondering, a softening.

"Old man,"—it was Dr. Parkman now—"you get that? See what you've got ahead? God, man—but it was splendid! She came to me with the idea—her idea—thought it all out herself. Karl was not happy—Karl must have his work. Karl—Karl—it was nothing but Karl. She was closer to him than any one in the world. She could make him see what others could not. Then she would be his eyes. Man—do you know that this woman has fairly made over her soul for love of you? Do you know that she has given up becoming one of the great painters of the world to become your assistant? Do you get it, Karl? So help me God it was the pluckiest fight I've ever seen or heard of. And she's won! I'm no fool—and I say she can do what she says she can. She's ready. She's ready to begin to-morrow. What do you say, old man? What do you think of Ernestine now? Isn't she worth taking a good brace and living for?"

And then he got it all; he was taking it in, rising to it, understanding, glowing. And a look that was very wonderful was growing upon Karl's face.

"Ernestine," he whispered, dwelling long upon the name, his voice a voice of wonder, "you did that—for me?"

"I did it because I love you so!" she whispered, and it seemed that surely death itself could not withstand the tenderness of it.

And then his whole face became transfigured. His blind eyes were opened to the light of love. His illumined face reflected it as the supreme moment of his life. In that moment he triumphed over all powers set against him. He rose out of suffering on wings of glory. He transcended sorrow and tragedy, blindness—yes, in that moment, death. He saw behind the veil; he saw into the glory of a soul; he comprehended the wonder of love. Compensation for suffering and loss—understanding, victory, peace; it was the human face lighted with divine light. They did not dare to move or breathe as they looked upon the wonder of his face.