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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her mood fell away like a p.r.i.c.ked bubble. The divine glow, that pa.s.sionate throbbing of conscious power, made way for the comprehension of that thing shot in upon her like a shaft.--"He loves his work just like this. You know now. You understand."

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

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

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

And then, grim, stern, she put her intellect upon it. She went over everything he had said that afternoon. Each thought of it opened up new channels, and she followed them all to their uttermost. And in that getting of it in hand there was more than insight, knowledge, conviction.

There was a complete sensing of the truth, a comprehending of things just without the pale of reason.

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

CHAPTER XXIV

LOVE CHALLENGES FATE

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

He had offered to go out, but she preferred coming to the office.

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

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

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

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

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

He sat down in the chair before his desk, and swung it around facing her.

Then he waited for her to speak.

That little timidity was upon her for the second, but she broke through it, seeming to shake it off with a little shake of her head. "Dr.

Parkman," she said--her voice was low and well controlled--"I have come to you because I want you to help me."

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