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

"Karl,"--after her moment of pa.s.sionate silence--"tell me this. Doesn't it get any better? One bit easier?"

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

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

"Yes!"--the word leaped out as though let loose from a long bondage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At first he could tell her best in the pa.s.sionate kiss, the gentle stroking of her face, the tenderness with which his hands rested upon her eyes. And then words added a little. "Everything, liebchen; everything of joy and comfort and beauty and light--light, sweetheart--everything of light and hope and consolation that comes to me now is through you.

You've done more than I would have believed in human power. You have actually made me forget, and can you fancy how supreme a thing it is to make a man forget that he is blind? You've put the beautiful things before me in their most beautiful way. Do you suppose that alone, or with any one else, I could see any beauty in anything? You've made me laugh!

How did you ever do that--you wonderful little Ernestine? And, sweetheart, you've helped me with my self-respect. You've saved me in a thousand little ways from the humiliations of being blind. Why you actually must have some idea of what it is like yourself!"

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

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

"But if you could only know how _much._"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We'll manage pretty well," he went on, in a lighter tone which did not quite deceive her. "Our life is not going to be one long spell of moping.

It's time now for the year's work to begin. You must get at your pictures, and I'll get at the books. Oh, I'll get interested in them, all right--and oh, liebchen"--with a tenderness which swept all else aside--"I have _you!_"

CHAPTER XXIII

HER VISION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You see,"--after they were seated--"I was really very uneducated. Isn't it surprising, Hastings, how much some of us don't know? Now what do you know about the history of art? Could you pa.s.s a soph.o.m.ore examination in it? Well, I couldn't until Ernestine began coaching me up this summer.

Now I'm quite fit to appear before women's clubs as a lecturer on art.

Literature, too, I'm getting on with; I'm getting acquainted with all the Swedes and the Irishmen and the Poles who ever put pen to paper."

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

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