For more than three years then they saw nothing of Ernestine. She left this note for Georgia: "I am sorry to seem erratic, but I cannot wait for you. I am going away at once. I am going first to New York, and then, I think, to Paris. I am going to do something which I can do better there than anywhere else. Thank you, Georgia, for everything. It must be satisfying to feel one has succeeded as beautifully in anything as you have succeeded in being a friend to me. Do not worry. There is nothing now to worry about. You will be glad to know that I am going back to my work."
A little later Dr. Parkman had this from her from New York: "I am sailing for Paris. I am going to work. I see it all now; all that you would have me see, and more. Some day I will try to show you just how well I see it.
"I do not know how I am going to bear part of it—the going back where we were so happy. But I will bear it, for nothing shall keep me from the work I see before me.
"Thank you—for all that you have done, and most of all for all that you have been. My idea is all comprehended in this: To the very uttermost of my power, I am going to make it right for Karl."
Six months later she wrote him this:
"Dear Doctor: Thank you for attending to those things for me. It infuriated me at first to think that the only thing in money left by the work of Karl's great life was the money from those books which I resented so bitterly. But how wrong to see it that way—for Karl would be so happy to know that the brave work he did after his blindness was helping me now. But I never spend a dollar of this money without thinking of the mood—the circumstances—out of which it was earned.
"No—no money for the work he did for the blind. Karl intended that as a gift. He would be so glad to know of its usefulness. He thought it all wrong that books for the blind were so expensive, and so many of the great things not to be had.
"Karl used to repeat a little verse of Heine, which he translated like this:"
'At first I did not even hope,
And to a hostile fate did bow—
But I learned to bear the burden—
Only do not ask me how.'
"I have learned to bear it here in Paris—only do not ask me how. I could not say. I do not know.