It struck her immediately as so entirely wrong. She looked at the girl, and then again at the pictures. All the great things they conveyed were passing her by. She missed the essence of it. The greatness of the work merely moved her to anger because she was not great herself. It was an attitude to close the soul.
"But you should care for life," she said, in her very gentle way. "Do the best you can with your own work, but work like this should, above everything else, make you care for life."
The girl moved impatiently. "You don't understand. I guess you are not an artist," and she rose and went away.
Ernestine smiled a trifle, but the strange little interview had opened up a long vista. The girl represented, in extreme measure, but fundamentally, the professional attitude. Most artists saw work in relation to themselves. Pictures were either better or worse than they could do. They came to the great things like these, seeking something, usually some mechanical device, to take away to their own work. She could see so plainly now the shallowness of that.
Her own mood had changed,—broken. Perhaps it was the consciousness that she too had been seeing it in relation to herself, or it may have been but natural reaction. The big uprising was dying down; the heat of the passion had passed; it was all different now, and in the wake of her brimming moment there came the calm that follows storm, the sadness of spirit which attends the re-enthronement of reason, but also the understanding, far-seeingness, which is the aftermath of great passion like that.
There had come to her, as she sat there beside the girl, a throbbing determination to do both things. The thought had come before, but always to be banished. It came now with new insistence just because anything else seemed so impossible. There had never come, even to the outermost edge of her consciousness, the thought of giving up the work she was going to do for Karl. Her hardest hour had never even suggested the possibility of surrender. Her love had seen its way; her life had been consecrated. But now, when it seemed no longer within her power to deny the work for which she had been ordained, it seemed that to fulfill both things was the one thing possible. But in this after-moment of unblurred understanding she saw she could do both things only by taking from the things she gave to Karl. It would mean giving her soul to the one, and what she had left to the other. And she knew that she could never do what she meant to do for Karl unless she gave everything within herself to that cause. The chief aim of her struggle in the laboratory had not been to acquire knowledge and usefulness—that she could do, she knew; her real aim had been to give to Karl's work the things she had always given to her own. With a divided soul she could do no more for him than any other assistant. She was seeking to give him herself. Oh no—it was simple enough; she had no thought of offering Karl an empty vessel.
Her mind saw it all, her will never wavered, but the bruised, conquered spirit quivered under the pain. A long time she sat there, and as the hour went by a strange thing happened. The pictures were healing the spirit which they had torn. As they had first moved her to the frenzy for achievement, had then left her with the pain of relinquishment, they were bringing her now something of the balm of peace. How big they were!—first passion, then pain, then understanding, now strength.
Ernestine came in that hour to see a great truth. It was something she worked out for herself, something taught her by life and her own heart, and that is why it reached her soul as it could never have done had she but read it in books. She came to see that the greatest thing in life was to be in harmony with the soul of the world. She came into the understanding that to do that, one need not of necessity paint great pictures, one need not stand for any specific achievement, one need only so work out one's life that one made for harmony and not for discord. The greatest thing pictures could do was to draw men into this world harmony. These pictures were great because they reached the soul, and she came to see, and this is what few do see, that the soul which is reached is not less great than the soul which has spoken. She too could have been one of the souls to speak; she accepted that in the simplicity with which we receive the indisputable, but it was good to think that she would not have failed utterly in fulfilling herself, if at the end, no matter through what, she made for harmony, and not for discord.
She grew so quiet then: the quiet of deep understanding. A long time she sat before a picture of light out beyond some trees. Oh what a world—with the light coming through the trees like that, and men to see it, and make it seen! She wished Karl might see these pictures; she looked at them with a new intentness,—she would tell Karl all about them; he would be so glad she had come.
She rose to go. Once more she looked around at the pictures, and to her eyes there came a dimness, and to her spirit a deep and tender yearning. There would be joy in having done such work as this. But there were other things! To work out one's life as bravely and well as one knew how, to do what seemed best, to be faithful and unfailing to those who were nearest one, to be willing to lay down one's life for one's love,—perhaps when the end of the world was reached, and all things translated in terms of universal things, to have done that would itself mean the painting of a masterpiece. Perhaps the God of things as they are would see the unpainted pictures.