For a long time he sat there without moving. It was the exhaustion which follows intoxication, for he had indeed intoxicated himself that afternoon, and with an idea. It had come about so strangely. After they sat down to dinner, he had been on the point a half a dozen times, of excusing himself on the plea of a bad headache. Then when they began to talk about doctors, those other things had come to him, and it was as though the spirit of all those men who had gone down that way entered into him, came so close, possessed him so completely, that he could not hold back those words about them. A spirit quite beyond his control had moved him to that little toast. After that, something—perhaps a spark from the nerve of those men of whom he had spoken—brought his mind firmly into possession of the feeling that everything was all right. It was not that he argued himself out of his fears, but rather that something brought the assurance of its being all right, and after that there came a number of arguments sustaining the conviction. Just before dinner he had gone over to the laboratory and looked at the culture. It had not shown anything at all. At the time he accepted that as a matter of course—it was not time for it to show anything. But looking back on it after this conviction came to him, he took the very fact of its not showing anything as proof that there was nothing there to show. His mind only grasped one side of it—that it showed nothing at all. Brightening under that he began to talk lightly, to joke with Georgia, and talking that way seemed to enable him to keep hold of the conviction that everything was all right. The more he talked, the more sure he was of it, the gayer he felt, the more disposed to let his mind run wild. He was a little afraid if he stopped talking, this beautiful conviction of its being all right would leave him. So he made Georgia keep at it, Georgia was the one could play that sort of game.
As he talked, new arguments came to him. The oculist! At first he had thought it a bad thing that the oculist could not tell what was the matter. Now he seized upon that as proving there was nothing the matter at all. And Dr. Parkman had said, at the last, that it did not amount to anything. At the time that had been a mere conventional phrase, but now, in his exhilaration, he seized upon it as indisputable truth. But always there was the feeling that he must keep on feeling this way, or the conviction, and all that it meant, would go. That was why he clung to Georgia. Finally he reached the point where he could distinctly remember getting the other stuff—the stuff which did not make any difference—on his hands. He could fairly see it on his hands, could remember distinctly getting it in his eye. And then Georgia had said something about going, and he had begged her not to go. But she insisted, and he began to feel then that the exhilaration was wearing off, that he was coming back to face things; to the doubt, the uncertainty, the suffering. And now that he had come back to things as they were, he felt inexpressibly tired.
He went over it again and again, trying to gain something now, not from any form of excitement, but from things as they were. Suddenly his face brightened. He sat there in deep thought, and then at last he smiled a little. Whatever happened must have occurred Friday afternoon. But he had never in all his life felt as happy about his work as he did before he left the laboratory Friday afternoon. Could a man feel like that, would it be in the heart of things to let a man feel that way, if he had already entered upon the road of his destruction? It had been more than a happiness of the mind; it was a happiness of the soul, and would not a man's soul send out some note of warning? And then that same evening when he and Ernestine sat before the fire! If already this grim fate had entered into their lives, would not their love, would not her love, all intuition, deep-seeing, feeling that which it could not understand, have felt in that moment of supreme happiness, some token of what was ahead? It could not be that the world jeered at men like that. Their love would have told them something was wrong.
Ernestine came in just then and he called her to him.
"Liebchen," he said, "I've been thinking about that evening of your birthday, about how beautiful it was. Weren't you happy, dear, as we sat there before the fire?"
"So happy, Karl," she murmured, warmly glad to have her own Karl again.
"Everything seemed so beautiful; everything seemed so perfectly right."
He drew her to him with a passion she did not understand. His Ernestine! His wife! She who communed with love, whose harmony with the great soul of things was perfect—they could not have deceived her like that! Ernestine and love dwelt too closely together. She would have received some sign.
For a time that calmed and sustained him; he believed in it; it was his weapon to use against the doubts and terrors which preyed upon him. But the gloom of his soul seemed to thicken with the deepening of the night. His heart grew cold with the coming of the shadows. The passing of day inspired in him fears not to be reasoned away.
He grew very nervous during the evening and finally said he must go over to the laboratory and arrange some things for morning. Ernestine protested against it—and if he must go would he not let her go with him? But he told her he believed it would be better for his head if he walked alone for just a little while. He did not have a headache more than once in five years, he assured her, laughing a little, and when he did, it was apt to upset him.
When he came back at last—it seemed to her a very long time—she saw, watching from the window, that he was walking very slowly, almost as if exhausted She could not hold back her alarm at his white, worn face. Something in it gripped at her heart.