"Oh, little one—your eyes—your dear eyes—your lovely hair—your smile—your arms about my neck—your whispered word in my ear—your soft cheek against mine—your laugh—your voice—your tenderness—I want it all to-night—and the Ernestine of the silences—the Ernestine who understands without knowing—helps without trying.
"Soon you will be back. That will be sunrise after long darkness.
"Good-night. It's hard to leave you—so lonesome—wanting you so. Again, good-night, dear girl for whom my arms are yearning. Bless you, sweetheart—God bless you—and does God, Himself, know what you have been to me?"
She read the last of it, as always, with sobs uncontrollable. Dr. Parkman—everything—was forgotten. It was Karl alone in the library, longing for her, needing her—and she not there.
"Oh, Karl—Karl!" she sobbed across the black chasm of the year—"if I could only have had that hour!"
CHAPTER XLI
WHEN THE TIDE CAME IN
But the days which came then were different. Dr. Parkman had stirred her to a discontent with despair.
She had come West with Georgia and Joe. For five days they had been at this little town on the Oregon coast. Through the day and through the night she listened to the call of the sea. It stirred her strangely. At times it frightened her.
She did not know why she should have wished to come. Perhaps it was because it seemed a reaching out to the unknown. After she had known she was to go, she would awaken in the night and hear the far-off roll of the Pacific, and would lie there very still as if listening for something from the farther unknown. Her whole being was stirred—drawn—unreasoningly expectant. There were moments when she seemed to just miss something to which she was very close.