"Oh, yes,--yes, in a way, I do. But it's thankless. And you never get anywhere. You break your neck one day, and then there's nothing to do the next, but start in and break it again. You're never any better to-day for yesterday's killing. Now with you--when you paint a good picture, it stays painted." "Why don't you get married?" asked Ernestine, innocently. "Married! Pooh--that would be a nice thing!" "Indeed it would. If you care for the man." Georgia was fidgeting; it was plain she wanted to talk about marriage, if she could do so without seeming to be vitally interested in the subject. "I mean it, Georgia," Ernestine went on. "If you care for him, marry him." "Care for whom?" Georgia demanded, and then coloured and laughed at the folly of her evasion. "Well, the fact of the matter is," she finally blurted out, "I don't know whether I do or not. Now, in a way, I do. That is, I want him to care for me, and I shouldn't like it if he sailed away to the Philippine Islands and never showed up again, but at the same time--well, I don't think even _you_ could get up much sentiment about paper bags, and besides"--tempestuously--"the name Tank's preposterous!" Ernestine laughed. "What are those terms the lawyers are so fond of--immaterial, irrelevant, and something else? Georgia, once when I was a little girl and went to visit my grandmother, I had a stubborn fit and wouldn't eat any dinner because the dining-room table had such ugly legs. And the dinner, Georgia, was good." It was Georgia who laughed then. "But Ernestine"--with a swift turn to seriousness--"you're not a fair sample; you and Karl are--exceptional. You see you have so _much_--intellectual companionship--sympathetic ideas--kindred tastes--don't you see what a fool I'd make of myself in judging the thing by you?"--she ended with a little gulp which might have been a laugh or might have been something else. Ernestine was giving some affectionate rubs to her brass coffee pot. When she raised her head it was to look at Georgia strangely. She continued to look, and the strangeness about her intensified. "Shall I tell you something, Georgia?"--her voice low and queer. "Something I _know_? You wouldn't be willing to fight 'till you dropped for sympathetic ideas. You wouldn't be willing to lay down your life for intellectual companionship. You wouldn't be willing to go barefoot and hungry and friendless for kindred tastes. Don't for one minute believe you would! The only thing for which you'd be willing to let the whole world slip away from you is an old-fashioned, out-of-date thing called love--just the primitive, fundamental love there is between a man and a woman. If you haven't it, Georgia--hold back. If you have,"--a wonderful smile of understanding glowed through a rush of tears--"oh, Georgia, if you _have_!" CHAPTER XXVII LEARNING TO BE KARL'S EYES She wondered many times in the next few months why she had put it in that very simple, self-evident way.