"Yes, Karl--I know. But now that we are coming home--together--alone, doesn't it seem--"

He turned away. The man had suffered too.

"And we are leaving it over there--over there, alone--away from us--the life that should have been--"

With that he turned resolutely back to her.

"Ernestine, isn't there another way to look at it? It came of our love, and now, dear, it has gone back into our love. It isn't something apart from us,--something gone. We have taken it back unto ourselves. It is here with us. The greater love we have--that is it, dear."

The flame of understanding leaped quickly to her eyes.

"Oh, I like that Karl," she whispered. "I like that better than anything you ever said."

She turned then and looked from the window. Across the fields, over near the horizon, she could see a little house. The smoke was curling from the chimney. The autumn twilight had come on and they had lighted the lamp. A bit of home! The tears came to her eyes--tears of tender antic.i.p.ation.

She too was to make a home. And was it not good to think that smoke was coming from many chimneys and many lamps were being lighted? Was it not good to feel that the dear world was full of homes?

To the man this coming back to Chicago, returning to his work after the year and a half he had been away, was charged with a happy significance.

As they drew nearer and nearer, an impatience possessed him to begin at once; that desire of the worker to start in immediately. He had worked some over there, had done a few things which were most satisfactory, but he wanted now to settle down to actual work in his old place, 'with his own things. He fell to wondering if they had changed the laboratory, resentful at the possibility.

"Why look here, Ernestine," he suddenly burst forth, turning to her eagerly, "to-morrow's a school day, we're late getting home, everything is in swing--they're waiting for me, and, by Jove, I can just as well as not begin to-morrow!"

A woman who never made one feel things in one's backbone might have resented the quick, eager plunge into work, but Ernestine knew the love of work herself, and her eyes brightened to his spirit.

"But dear me, Karl," after a second's hesitation, "it seems you should take a day or two first."

"Why?" he demanded.

"Well,"--vaguely--"to get rested up."

"Rested up!" He stretched forth his arm and then doubled it back, and they both laughed. "That's a joke--my getting rested up. Why I feel like a fighting c.o.c.k!"

"And crazy to get to work?"

"Getting that way. Oh, I tell you, Ernestine, there's nothing like it."

Again she did not mind; she understood. She looked at his glowing face, all alight with enthusiasm for the work to which he was going back. She was never tired of thinking how Karl's face was just what Karl's face should be--reflective of a clear-cut, far-seeing, deeply comprehending mind. It seemed all written there--all those things of mind and character, and something too of those other things--the things which were for her alone. Ernestine held that one could tell by looking at Karl that he was doing some great thing.

"But see here, Dr. Hubers, a nice way you have of shirking your domestic duties! Who is going to help me settle this famous house Georgia tells about?"

"I'll do it at night," he protested eagerly. "I'll work every night until the house is spick and span."

Ernestine sighed. "I have a sad feeling that our house never will be spick and span. But we'll have some fun,"--eagerly--"fixing it up."

"Of course we'll have fun fixing it up! Georgia's sure to be on hand, and I'll make old Parkman get busy too--do him good."

"I don't care about knowing a lot of men--"

"Well I should _hope_ not"

"You didn't let me finish. I was going to say that Dr. Parkman is one man I do want to know."

"You'll like Parkman; and he'll like you. By Jove, he's got to! You mustn't mind if he snaps your head off occasionally. His life's made him savage, but even his life--he's had an awful one, Ernestine--couldn't make him vicious. He's the gruffest, snarliest, biggest man I ever knew--meaner than the devil, and the best friend on top of earth. And Lord, how he works! I don't know any other three men could swing the same load. And I tell you, Ernestine, he's great. There's not a better surgeon in all Europe. Parkman's a tremendous help to me. Oh, it's going to be _great_ to get back!"

"We have some really nice things for our house," mused Ernestine. "I'm glad we decided to take that rug for the library. Of course it seemed pretty high, but a library without a nice rug wouldn't do at all--not for us."

"No--that's right--library without a rug--now I wonder if I am to have my old eight o'clock lecture hour? I _want_ that hour! I want to get all the school business out of the way in the morning. I must have plenty of uninterrupted time for myself. I tell you what it is, Ernestine, I'm going to _get_ it! What I saw over there of the other fellows makes me all the more sure of myself. And coming back now after being made all over new--you see there's such a thing as inspiration in my work, just as there is in yours. Of course it's work--work--work, work your way through this and that, but there's something or other that leads you on--and I _know_ I'm going to do something now!"

"I know it too, Karl," she responded, and the steadfastness shone strong through the tenderness now. "We all know it."

"I've got to," he murmured--"got to." And then his whole mind seized upon it; some suggestion had come to him, some of that inspiration of which he had spoken. He sat there looking straight ahead, brows drawn, eyes sometimes half closing, occasionally nodding his head as he saw a point more clearly. He looked in such moments as though indeed made for conquest,--indomitable. One could almost feel his mind at work, could fancy the skillful cutting away of error, the inevitable working ahead to truth.

At last he turned to her. "There's no reason for not beginning to-morrow," he said, with the eagerness of a boy who would try a new gun or fishing rod. "There are a whole lot of things I want to get right at now."

CHAPTER VI

"GLORIA VICTIS"

"We'll just put our Russian friend back here in the corner, where the shelf suppresses him," said Georgia, who seemed to have accepted the self-appointed position of head cataloguer. "Some of the students might happen to call."

"This," said Dr. Parkman, who was dusting Gibbon's Rome, "is the sort of thing that is called the backbone of a library."

"Consequently," replied Georgia glibly, "we will put it up here on the top shelf. n.o.body wants a library's backbone. It's to be had, not read.

Now the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, like our friend Mr. Shaw here, must be given places of accessibility."

The host was picking his way around among the contents of a box which he had just emptied upon the floor. The hostess was yielding to the temptation of an interesting bit which had caught her eye in dusting "An Attic Philosopher in Paris."

"Now here," said Dr. Hubers, picking up a thick, green book, "is Walt Whitman and that means trouble. No one is going to know whether he is prose or poetry."

"When art weds science," observed Georgia, "the resulting library is difficult to manage. Mr. Haeckel and Mr. Maeterlinck may not like being b.u.mped up here together."

"Then put Haeckel somewhere else," said Ernestine, looking up from her book.

"No, fire Maeterlinck," commanded Karl.

"See," said Georgia--"it's begun. Strife and dissension have set in."

"I'm neither a literary man nor a librarian," ventured Dr. Parkman, "but it seems a slight oversight to complete the list of poets and leave Shakespeare lying out there on the floor."

"Got my Goethe in?" asked Karl, after Shakespeare had been left immersed in Georgia's vituperations.

"I think Browning and Keats are over there under the Encyclopedia Britannica," said Ernestine, roused to the necessity of securing a favourable position for her friends.

"Observe," said Georgia, "how they have begun insisting on their favourite authors. This is one of the early stages."