a wave.
"Suppose we had to say everything in words!"
"Suppose we had to walk on one leg!"
"Oh, but that—you know, Karl, it's a little like the rivers and the ocean. The words are the rivers flowing into the ocean of silence. Rivers flow into oceans—but do they make them? And then the ocean gives back to the rivers in the things which it breathes out. There are so many reasons why it seems like that."
"Ernestine, where did you get all this? I sometimes think I'm not square with you at all. Why, I've been in all those places before! I saw the Bay of Naples long before I ever saw you—and yet I didn't really see it before at all. Don't you see? Eyes and appreciation and every decent thing I take from you. Where did you get it all, Ernestine?"
She pushed back a little curl which was always coming loose—he loved that little curl for always coming loose.
"Perhaps I 'got it' from that way you have of looking at me—the way you're looking at me now; or maybe I got it from the way you say 'Ernestine'—the way you said it just now. But does it matter much what comes from which?"—with which bit of lucidity she wrinkled up her nose at him in a way which always vanquished argument and returned to the silence which seemed waiting to claim her.
He watched her then; he loved so to do that—just see how far he could follow. Ernestine seemed to draw things to her in a way very wonderful to him.
"You know, liebchen,"—as he saw that steady light of resolution shine through the veil of her tenderness—"it seems so queer to me that you really do anything."
"Well for a neatly turned compliment—"
"I mean it seems so queer you should really amount to anything."
"Now before you overwhelm me with further adulation, what are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about your being an artist. I can't get used to your being anything but Ernestine! That day last spring when we went to see your Salon picture, and when those chaps were talking to you, and I realised that they just simply accepted you as one of them—that you belonged, and that that was all there was about it—I, oh I had such a funny feeling that day. And now, a minute ago, when I saw that look, I had it again."
"Why, Karl, you don't mind, do you?"
"No, it's just that it seems queer. You see you're such a wonderful sweetheart, it's hard to think of you as anything else. I'll never forget that day over there. Something just seemed to leap up within you. I—well I think I was a little scared—or was I awed? Something that was shining from your eyes made me feel things in my backbone."
"But you're glad?" she laughed.
"Of course I'm glad; and I'm proud. But it's—queer."
She smiled at him understandingly; the understandingness of her smile always went beyond her words. It was a beautiful face upon which he watched the play of lights, saw the changing currents of thought and dreams and purpose. But the thing most rare in it, that which made one quite forget accepted standards, was the steadfastness with which a certain great light shone through the aura of her tenderness. There were moments in which she transcended both her beauty and her beauty's weaknesses.
As the flower to the sun, naturally, quietly, inevitably, she had expanded under the breath of life. With the fullness of a rich nature she had responded to the touch of the spirit of living. Love loved her for what she had been able to take.
And in the year which had passed, life, with tender rather than defacing lines, had put upon her face the touch of sorrow. Europe meant more to her than an Old World civilisation, more than tradition, beauty or art. It even meant more than the place where she had spent those first dear months of her love. It meant to her the place where she had hoped with woman's dearest hope, and where she had given up the child which should have been hers. Her tenderest, deepest thoughts were not of the wonders and beauties she had seen; they were of the dreams within, of the holy happiness of first knowledge, and then the grief in giving up the much desired, which she had known only in anticipation. The most cherished memories of their love were memories of those days in which he had comforted her, of the tenderness with which he had consoled, the strength with which he had upheld. Those hours had reached far into her soul, deepening it, giving her, as if in compensation, new channels for love, new understanding of those innermost things of life. But in those first days, even while the soul of the woman was deepening, the bruised heart was as the heart of a child. It was as a child she had been to him in those days, and he had comforted her as one would comfort an idolised child, whose hurt one strove to take wholly unto one's self. The memory of those hours knit them together as no other thing could have done.
Looking down at her face now he saw that look he had come to know—that far-away, frightened, wistful look. Very gently he laid his hand upon her knee.
"I am going to make you so happy. Life is going to be so beautiful," he said.
She smiled at him, but the tears were in it.
"Yes, Karl—I know. But now that we are coming home—together—alone, doesn't it seem—"
He turned away. The man had suffered too.
"And we are leaving it over there—over there, alone—away from us—the life that should have been—"
With that he turned resolutely back to her.
"Ernestine, isn't there another way to look at it? It came of our love, and now, dear, it has gone back into our love. It isn't something apart from us—something gone. We have taken it back unto ourselves. It is here with us. The greater love we have—that is it, dear."
The flame of understanding leaped quickly to her eyes.
"Oh, I like that Karl," she whispered. "I like that better than anything you ever said."
She turned then and looked from the window. Across the fields, over near the horizon, she could see a little house. The smoke was curling from the chimney. The autumn twilight had come on and they had lighted the lamp. A bit of home! The tears came to her eyes—tears of tender anticipation. She too was to make a home. And was it not good to think that smoke was coming from many chimneys and many lamps were being lighted? Was it not good to feel that the dear world was full of homes?
To the man this coming back to Chicago, returning to his work after the year and a half he had been away, was charged with a happy significance. As they drew nearer and nearer, an impatience possessed him to begin at once; that desire of the worker to start in immediately. He had worked some over there, had done a few things which were most satisfactory, but he wanted now to settle down to actual work in his old place, 'with his own things. He fell to wondering if they had changed the laboratory, resentful at the possibility.
"Why look here, Ernestine," he suddenly burst forth, turning to her eagerly, "to-morrow's a school day, we're late getting home, everything is in swing—they're waiting for me, and, by Jove, I can just as well as not begin to-morrow!"
A woman who never made one feel things in one's backbone might have resented the quick, eager plunge into work, but Ernestine knew the love of work herself, and her eyes brightened to his spirit.
"But dear me, Karl," after a second's hesitation, "it seems you should take a day or two first."
"Why?"
