They left the building and sauntered slowly across the campus. Almost in the centre of the quadrangle Ernestine stopped and looked all around. She was beginning to feel what it was for which the University of Chicago stood. It was not "college life," all those things vital to the undergraduate heart, which this university suggested. She fancied there might be things the undergraduate would miss here; she was even a little glad her own college days had been spent at the smaller school. As she stood looking about at building upon building she had visions, not of boys and girls singing their college songs, but of men and women working their way toward truth. She looked from one red roof to another, and each building seemed to her a separate channel through which men were working ahead to the light. It was a place for research, for striving for new knowledge, for clearing the way. She turned her face for the moment to the north; there was great Chicago, where men fought for wealth and power, Chicago, with all the enthusiasm of youth, and the arrogance of youthful success, with all the strength of youthful muscle, all the power and possibility of young brain and heart. This seemed far away from the Board of Trade, from State Street and Michigan Avenue. But was not the spirit of it all one? This, too, was Chicago, the Chicago which had fought its way through criticism, indifference and jeers to a place in the world of scholarship. People who knew what they were talking about did not laugh at the University of Chicago any more. It had too much to its credit to be passed over lightly. Men were doing things here; she felt all about her the ideas here in embryo. How would they develop? Where would they strike? What things now slumbering here would step, robust and mighty, into the next generation?
And greatest of all these was Karl! She turned to him with flushed, glowing face. He had been watching her, following much of her thought. "I like this place," she said—her eyes telling all the rest. "I was not sure I was going to, but I do."
CHAPTER IX
AS THE SURGEON SAW IT
"But, Karl, you must!"
"I tell you, my dear, I can't!"
"Well, I think it's just—"
"Now, Ernestine,"—in tones maddeningly calm and conciliatory—"you go on down to Parkman's office and I'll come just as soon as I can. Now be sensible—there's a good girl."
"Well, I call it mean!"—this after hanging up the receiver. "I don't care,"—still talking into the telephone, as if there were satisfaction in having something understand—"it's not nice of Karl."
They had an engagement with Dr. Parkman for dinner at his club, to meet some people he wanted her to know, and now Karl had telephoned from the laboratory at the last minute that he was not ready to leave and for her to go on down alone.