"But I have not finished telling you. After our talk yesterday it seemed to me I could not go on at all. I didn't know what to do. In the evening I was up in my studio--"--she paused, striving to formulate it,--"No, I see I can't tell it, but suddenly things came to me, and, doctor, I understand it now better than Karl understands it himself." He felt the things which she did not say; indeed through it all it was the unspoken drew him most irresistibly. "I'll not try to tell you how it all worked itself out, but I saw things very clearly then, and all the facts and all the reason and all the logic in the world could not make me believe I did not see the truth. My idea of taking it up myself, of my being the one to bring Karl back to his work, seemed to come to me like some great divine light. I suppose," she concluded, simply, "that it was what you would call a moment of inspiration." She leaned her head back as though very tired, but smiling a little. He did not speak; he had too much the understanding heart to intrude upon the things shining from her face. "I could do good work, doctor. I've always felt it, and I have done just enough to justify me in knowing it. I don't believe any one ever loved his work more than I love mine, and last night when I saw things so clearly I saw how the longing for it would come to me--oh, I know. Don't think I do not know. But something will sustain me; something will keep my courage high, and that something is the look there will be on Karl's face when I tell him what I have done. You see we will not tell Karl at first; we will keep it a great secret. He will know I am working hard, but will think it is my own work. If we told him now he would say it was impossible. His blindness, the helplessness that goes with it, has taken away some of his confidence, and he would say it could not be done. But what will he say,"--she laughed, almost gleefully--"when he finds I have gone ahead and made myself ready for him? When _you_ tell him I can do it--and the laboratory men tell him so? He will try it then, just out of gratitude to me. Oh, it will not go very well at first. It is going to take practice--days and weeks and months of it--to learn how to work together. But, little by little, he will gain confidence in himself and in me, he will begin getting back his grip--enthusiasm--all the things of the old-time Karl, and then some day when we have had a little success about something he will burst forth--'By Jove--Ernestine--I believe we _can_ make it go!'--and that," she concluded, softly, "will be worth it all to me." Again a silence which sank deeper than words--a silence which sealed their compact. She came from it with the vigorously practical, "Now, Dr. Parkman,"--sitting up very straight, with an assertive little gesture--"you go out to that university and fire their souls! Wake them up! Make them _see_ it! And when do you think I can begin?"