"Of course," Catherine spoke hurriedly. She wanted to get to the bottom of this before Henry went. If there was a bottom. "Your interest depends upon your valuation of what you are doing, doesn't it?" "Somewhat." Henrietta paused. "But you know, you can knock a hole in the value of anything, if you try. I can shoot a doubt straight through doctoring. Why bother to mend people! Children--they just grow up to make blundering old folks." She looked tired, as if the flesh of her cheeks and chin sagged. "But do I shoot it? Not me. Same with your job, same with Charles's job. May make a dent in the old world." When she had gone, Catherine looked in at the door of the study. Charles presented a shoulder overintent. He knew she was there. To speak his name was like tugging at a great weight. "Charles." He turned. The weight increased. "You really feel this work is just empty fiddling?" "There doesn't seem much use in saying what I _think_"--his emphasis pointed out the difference--"since it is taken as limited and personal." Catherine retreated to her own room, before hasty, intemperate words escaped her. There was a cruel enough abyss between them now; no use to fill it with wreckage. VI The following morning, when Dr. Roberts came in with time tables and maps to help complete the itinerary, Catherine responded with apathy to the folders. She heard that doubt gnawing away, a mouse behind the wainscoting. Finally, as Dr. Roberts opened a new map, she let the mouse out. "What," she asked, "exactly, do you think we are going to accomplish? With the whole thing. Trip, book, all of it." Dr. Roberts spread the thin map crackling on the desk, and pressed his forefinger into Ohio. Then he lifted his head, and his eyes, shrewdly penetrating, studied her face. "So----" he said. "It has lost its savor." "Do you think we can change things, by criticism, or suggestion? Won't all these schools go on in their own way?" Dr. Roberts sat on the edge of the table, one neat toe pushed against the floor to balance himself, one swinging. "I'm glad this came up now, instead of somewhere in Ohio," he said. "I suppose we all have hours of wondering what it amounts to, all these mahogany desks and busy people." He brought his fist down emphatically. "But I tell you, something must come of studies like this! Institutions have gone on long enough, nosing along with blind snouts in old ruts. The day has come when intellect, intelligence can step in and say, 'here, that's the wrong path. You're going that way only because it is an old path. Here's the better way.' Conscious, intelligent control. That's the coming idea." "But can a blind snout open its eyes?" Catherine was intent, serious. "Can you change things? That way?" "See what Flexner's study of medical schools did for them! Even Smithson's few papers on sanitation have had an ordinance or two as a result. Where does all that agitation about child labor in the South come from, if not from investigation?"