"Dear,"—sitting on a stool beside him—"you're perfectly sure this trouble with your eyes isn't any more serious than you think?"
"Yes," he answered, firmly enough, but something in his voice sounded queer, "I'm perfectly sure of that."
"Show me your pictures, Ernestine," laying his hand upon her hair; "I've taken a particular notion that I want to see them."
"But first"—carried back to it—"I want to tell you something." She laughed, excitedly. "I was coming down to tell you as soon as the doctor left. Oh Karl—my picture in Paris—I heard from it this morning, and its success has been—tremendous!" She laughed happily over the word and did not think why it was Karl's hand gripped her shoulder in that quick, tight way. "Shall I read you all about it, dear? And then will you promise to cheer right up?"
Still that tight grip upon her shoulder! It hurt a little, but she did not mind—it just showed how much Karl cared. The hand was still there as she read the letter, and then the clippings which told of the rare quality of her work, predicted the great things she was sure to do,—sometimes it tightened a little, and sometimes it relaxed, and once, with a quick movement he stooped down and turned her ring around, turning the stone to the inside of her hand.
When she had finished he was quite still for a long minute. He was breathing hard;—Karl was excited about it too! And then he stooped over and kissed her forehead, and it startled her to feel that his lips were very cold.
"Liebchen," he said, his voice trembling a bit—Karl did care so much!—"I am glad." For a minute he was very still again, and then he added, seeming to mean a different thing by it—"I am very glad."
"It's gone to my head a little, Karl! Oh I'm perfectly willing to admit it has. I don't think I should appreciate the Gloria Victis very much myself this morning," she laughed, happily.
She was too absorbed to notice the quick little drawing in of his breath, or his silence. "After all, it would be a sorry thing if I didn't succeed," she pursued, gayly, "for you stand so for success that we couldn't be so close together—could we, dear—if I were a dismal failure?"
"You think not?" he asked—and she wondered if he had taken a little cold; his voice sounded that way.