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 x.x.xIII

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 a.s.surance that Ernestine was perfectly well, and was going away because of her work, that he accepted the situation more easily than she had antic.i.p.ated. "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 pa.s.sed 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.