Her guiding hand was on his arm, but more as if she liked to have it there, than as though necessary. "Your little finger could pilot me through Hades" he said, lovingly, gratefully, as a light touch told him of a step to go down, and again she laughed; it was very easy to laugh this morning.
The winter, full of hard things for them both, had gone now, and spring, as is spring's way, held promise. In the laboratory they no longer treated Ernestine with mere courteous interest. That day in December when she went down to Dr. Parkman's operation had marked a change. Since then there had been a light ahead, a light which shed its rays down the path she must go.
What did it matter if she were a little stupid about this or that, if Mr. Beason was unconsciously rude or Mr. Willard consciously polite? For she knew now—and did anything matter save the final things? With her own feeling of its not mattering their attitude had seemed to change; she became more as one with them—she was quick to get that difference. "You're arriving on the high speed," Dr. Parkman had assured her when he visited the laboratory a few days before.
So she knew why she was happy, for added to all that was it not a glorious and propitious thing that Karl felt like taking a walk? Did it not argue a new interest in life—a new determination not to be shut off from it? And Karl—why did he too seem to feel that the spring held new and better things? Was it just the call of spring, or did Karl sense the good things ahead? Could it be that her soul, unable to contain itself longer, had whispered to his that new days were coming?
"Why, even a fellow on his way to the penitentiary for life would have to get some enjoyment out of this morning," he said, after they had stood still for a minute to listen to the song of a bird, and had caught the sweetness of a flowering tree.
"And oh, Karl," she laughed, joyously, "you're not on your way to the penitentiary for life."
"No," he said, and he seemed to be speaking to something within himself rather than to her,—"I'm not!"
They had reached Jackson Park, and sat down for a little rest before they should wend their way on to the lake. "Oh, Ernestine," he said, taking it in in long breaths, feeling the dew upon his face, and hearing the murmur of many living things,—"tell me about it, dear. I want to see it too!"
"Karl—every tree looks as though it were just as glad as we are! Can't you feel that the trees feel just as we do about things? The leaves haven't all come out yet, some of them are holding themselves within themselves in a coy little way they have—although intending all the time to come out just as fast as ever they can. And it's that glorious, unspoiled green—the kind nature uses to make painters feel foolish. Oh, nature's having much fun with the painters this morning. Right over there,"—pointing with his finger—"is such a beautiful tree. I like it because all of its branches did not go in the way they were expected to go. Several of them were very perverse children, who mother trunk thought at one time were going to ruin her life, but you know lives aren't so easily ruined after all. 'Now you go right up there at an angle of twenty-two degrees,' she said to her eldest child. 'Not at all,' said the firstborn, 'I intend to lean right over here at whatsoever angle will best express my individuality.' And though the mother grieved for a long time she knows now—Karl—how foolish we are! But listen. You hear that bird who is trying to get all of his soul into his throat at once? He's 'way up there on the top branch, higher than everything else, and so pleased and proud that he is, and he's singing to a little blue cloud straight above him, and I tell you I never saw such blue—such blue within blue. Its outside dress is a very filmy blue, but that's made over an under dress of deeper blue, and there's just a little part in it where you can see right into the heart, and that's a blue so deep and rich it makes you want to cry. And oh, Karl—the heart itself has opened a little now, and you can get a suggestion, just a very indefinite suggestion—but then all inner things are indefinite—that inside the heart of the cloud is its soul, and you are permitted one fleeting glimpse to tell you that the soul of the cloud is such a blue as never was dreamed of on land or on sea."
"I can see that cloud," he said,—"and the bird looking up at it, and the tree whose eldest child was so perverse and so—individual."