She had been standing, and she sank to a chair. Like all great changes it sapped up strength. The blood had cooled too suddenly, and she was weak and trembling—but, oh, how she understood! He himself did not understand it as she understood it now.
Pushing upon him—dominating him—clamouring—crowding for outlet when outlet had been closed—gathering, growing, and unable to find its valve of escape—why it would crowd upon him—kill him! Beat it down? But it was the deathless in him. With human strength put out a fire that was divine?
She covered her face with her hands to shut it out. But she could not shut it out; it was there—a thing to be faced, not evaded—a thing which would grow, not draw away. And she loved him so! In this moment of perfect understanding, this divine camaraderie of the soul—knowing that they were touched with the same touch—drew from a common fount—she felt within her a love for him, an understanding, which all of the centuries behind her, the eternity out of which she had come—had gone to make.
And then, grim, stern, she put her intellect upon it. She went over everything he had said that afternoon. Each thought of it opened up new channels, and she followed them all to their uttermost. And in that getting of it in hand there was more than insight, knowledge, conviction. There was a complete sensing of the truth, a comprehending of things just without the pale of reason.
Her face pale, her eyes looking into that far distance, she sat there for more than an hour, oblivious for the first time since his blindness to the thought that Karl might be needing her, lost to all conventional instincts as hostess. Hard and fast the thoughts beat upon her, and then at last in the wake of those thoughts, out beyond, there was born a great light. It staggered her at first; it seemed a light too great for human mind to bear. But time passed, and the light burned on, steady, fixed, not to pass away. And in that momentous hour which words are quite powerless to record, something was buried, and something born.
CHAPTER XXIV
LOVE CHALLENGES FATE
The doctor hung up the receiver slowly and with meditation. And when he turned from the telephone his thoughts did not leave the channel to which it had directed them. What was it Mrs. Hubers wanted? Why was she coming to the office at four that afternoon? Something in her voice made him wonder.
He had offered to go out, but she preferred coming to the office. Evidently then she wished to see him alone; and she had specified that she come when he could give her the most time. Then there was something to talk over. He had asked for Karl, and she answered, cheerfully, that he was well. "And you?" he pursued, and she had laughed with that—an underlying significance in that laugh perplexed him as he recalled it, and had answered buoyantly: "I? Oh, splendid!"
It did not leave his mind all day; he thought about it a great deal as he drove his car from place to place. It even came to him in the operating room, and it was not usual for anything to intrude there.