One of their favourite speculations, as the days went on, was as to whether any one had ever been so happy before. They argued it from all sides, in a purely unprejudiced and dispassionate manner, and always arrived at the conclusion that of course no one ever had. "Because," Ernestine would say, "no one ever had so many reasons for being happy." "And if they had," he would respond, "they would have said something about it."
Ernestine worked that winter as she had never worked before. That first day had not been a deceptive one. She had done some of the things which something within her heart assured her that day she could do. The best thing she had done she sent to Laplace, as he had asked her to. "It's considered rather superior to disdain the Salon," she said to Karl, the day they packed the canvas, "but Paris seems the only way of proving to Americans that good can come out of America."
She had heard from Laplace that the picture would be hung. His brief comment had been that America could not be so bad as was sometimes said. She was eager now to hear more about it. She would surely have a letter very soon. And she and Karl were so happy! It had been such a glorious, wholesome, splendidly worth while winter.
It was one afternoon in early spring that over in the laboratory John Beason and Professor Hastings were talking of Dr. Hubers. "But that isn't all of it," said Professor Hastings in the midst of a discussion. "This fanaticism for veracity Huxley talks about isn't all of it by any means. Any of us can get together a lot of facts. It takes the big man to know what the facts mean."
"Somebody said that truth was the soul of facts," said Beason, in the uncertain way he talked of anything outside tabulated knowledge. "But I suppose that's just one of those things people say."
"Yes—but is it? Isn't it true? Why is Hubers greater than the rest of us? It isn't that he works harder. We all work. It isn't that he's more exact. We're all exact. Isn't it that very thing of having a genius for getting the soul out of his facts? That man looks a long way ahead—smells truth away off, as it were. I tell you, Mr. Beason, scientific training kills many men for research work. They're afraid to move more than inch by inch. They won't take any jumps. Now Dr. Hubers jumps; I've seen him do it. Of course, after he's made his jump he goes back and sees that there aren't any ditches in between, but he's not afraid of a leap in the dark. That's his own peculiar gift. Most of us are not made for jumping."
"But that doesn't sound like the scientific method," said Beason, brows knitted.
"I'll admit it wouldn't do for general practice," replied the older man, a twinkle in his eye. "The spirit has to move you, or you wouldn't gain anything but a broken neck."
"Yes, but that thing of a spirit moving you," said Beason, more sure of himself here, "that does not belong in science at all; that is a part of religion."
"And to a man like Dr. Hubers"—very quietly and firmly—"science is religion."