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

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

She did not answer that, but pondered something a minute. "Dr. Parkman,"

she began abruptly, "just why do you think it is Karl cannot go on with his work? I do not mean his lectures, but his own work in the laboratory, the research?"

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

"Eyes--yes. But the eye is only an instrument; he has not lost his brain." The flush in her cheeks deepened. Her eyes met his in challenge.

Her voice on that had been very firm.

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

"I want to know just what is your idea of why he cannot. All the things of mind and temperament--things which make him Karl--are there as before.

Are we not letting a very little thing hold us back?"--there was much repression now, as though she must hold herself in check, and wait.

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

"Why?" she asked calmly.

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

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

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

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

"You put it very clearly," he a.s.sented.

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

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

"But it _is_ possible! Oh if I can only make you see this now! Doctor, _don't_ you see it? _I_ am closer to him than any one in the world! _I_ am the one to take up his work!"

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

"Dr. Parkman," she began--and it seemed now that he had never known her at all before--"most of the biggest things ever proposed in this world have sounded very ridiculous to the people who first heard of them. The unprecedented has usually been called the impossible. Now I ask you to do just one thing. Don't hold my idea at arm's length as an impossibility.

Look it straight in the face without prejudice. Who would do more for Karl than any one else on earth? Who is closer to him than any one else in the world? Who can make him see without seeing?--yet, know without knowing? Dr. Parkman,"--voice eager, eyes very tender--"is there any question in your mind as to who can come closest to Karl?"

"But--but--" he gasped.

"I know," she hastened--"much to talk over; so many things to overcome.

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

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

"Yes,"--and the tenderness leaped suddenly to pa.s.sion and the pa.s.sion intensified to sternness--"I am simply a.s.suming that it _can_ be done, and through obstacle and argument, from now until the end of my life, I am going on a.s.suming that very thing, and furthermore, Dr.

Parkman,"--relaxing a little and smiling at him under standingly--"just as soon as the light has fully dawned upon you, _you_ are going to begin a.s.suming that, and you are the very man--oh, I know--to keep on a.s.suming it in the face of all the obstacles which the University of Chicago--yes, and all creation--may succeed in piling up. There is one thing on which you and I are going to stand very firmly together. That thing,"--with the deep quiet of finality--"is that Karl shall go on with his work."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then suddenly she came sharply back to the practical, brought herself ruthlessly back to it, as if fearing it was her practicality he would question. "Besides, Karl's work is the more important. n.o.body is going to die for a water colour or an oil painting; people are dying every day for the things Karl can give. But, doctor,"--far too feminine not to press the advantage--"if I can do _that_, don't you think you can afford to break through your conservatism and--you _will_, doctor, won't you?"

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

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

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

"Isn't it strange, doctor," she went on, after a pause, "how we think we understand, and then suddenly awake to find we have not been understanding at all? Karl and I had a long talk yesterday, and in that talk he seemed able to let me right into it all. All summer long I did my best, but I see now I had not been understanding. And understanding as I do now--caring as I care--do you think I can sit quietly by and see Karl make himself over to fit this miserable situation? Do you think I am going to help him adjust himself to giving up the great thing in him?

No--he is not going to accept it! I tell you Karl is to be Karl--he is to do Karl's work--and find Karl's place. Why I tell you, Dr. Parkman, I will not _have_ it any other way!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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