But she had not let go that idea of something being done. "Karl, couldn't you go on with it? Isn't there some way? Can't we find a way?"
He shook his head. "I have thought of it by the hour—gone over every side of it. But work like that takes a man's whole being. It takes more than mere eyes and hands—more than just mind. You must have the spirit right for it—all things must work together. It's not the sort of work to do under a handicap. God knows I'd start in if I could see my way—but neither the world nor myself would have anything to gain. Some one would have to be eyes for me—and so much more than eyes. It's all in how things look, dear—their appearance tells the story. An assistant could tell me what he saw—but he could not bring to me what would be conveyed if I saw it myself. All that was individual in my work would be gone. Minds do not work together like that. I should be too much in the dark," he concluded, sadly.
For a long time her head was on his shoulder. She was giving him of that silent sympathy which came with an eternal freshness from her heart.
"We'll manage pretty well," he went on, in a lighter tone which did not quite deceive her. "Our life is not going to be one long spell of moping. It's time now for the year's work to begin. You must get at your pictures, and I'll get at the books. Oh, I'll get interested in them, all right—and oh, liebchen"—with a tenderness which swept all else aside—"I have you!"
CHAPTER XXIII
HER VISION
Some of the university people came over that night to see Karl. Ernestine was glad of that, for she had been dreading the evening. Their talk of the afternoon had made it more clear and more hard than it had ever been before.
Her mothering instinct had been supreme that summer. It had dominated her so completely as to blur slightly the clearness of her intellectual vision. To be doing things for him, making him as comfortable as possible, to find occupation for him as one does for the convalescent, to hover about him, showering him with manifestations of her love and woman's protectiveness—it had stirred the mother in her, and in the depths of her sorrow there had been a sublime joy.
Now she could not see her way ahead. It was her constant doing things to "make it up to him" had made the summer bearable at all. With the clearing of her vision her sustaining power seemed taken from her.
"And how has it gone with you this summer?" Professor Hastings asked, holding both of her hands for a minute in fatherly fashion as she met him in the hall.