"You're never horrid any more," he said, and, strangely enough, he said it sadly. "Well, do you _want_ me to be?" "Yes! I wish you'd turn in once in a while and call me an old brute, and say you wished you'd never seen me, and didn't know how in heaven's name you were going to go on living with me!" "Karl," she gasped--"are you going _crazy_?" "No--at least I hope not. But you're just nice to me all the time, because--because I'm blind! I don't like it! I wish you'd _swear_ at me sometimes!" "Well, in the first place," laughing, but serious too,--it had come so heatedly, "it isn't my way to swear at any one. I never did swear at you. Why should I begin now?" "Oh, swear was figurative language," he laughed. "And of all things for a man to harrow up his soul about! Not liking it because his wife is never horrid to him!" "It's not as crazy as it sounds. Are you and I a couple of plaster saints? Well, hardly! Then why don't we have any quarrels? It's just because you're sorry for me! I'll not have you being sorry for me!" he concluded, almost angrily. But when she kissed him, he could not resist a smile. "You don't know much, do you, Karl? Don't you know that we don't quarrel about little things, because we've had so many big things on hand? We don't swear at each other, because--" "Because we have so many other things to swear at," he finished for her. "That's it. All our fighting emotion is being used up." "Oh, you're such a genius for making things seem right! Now looking at it that way, I'm quite reconciled to your being nice to me. Still I want you to promise that if you ever feel like swearing, you will." "I promise," she responded solemnly. "Don't do things--or not do things--because you're sorry for me, Ernestine." "We are 'sorry for' people who are unequal to things. I'm sorry with you, not for you, Karl." "Ernestine,"--with an affectionate little laugh--"is there _anything_ you don't understand?" "You might play a little for me," he said after a silence. "Play that thing that ends in a question." "Of Liszt's?" "Yes; the one that leaves you wondering." At first she had resented bitterly her not being able to play more satisfyingly. If only music were her work! It seemed an almost malicious touch that fate, in taking away Karl's own work, had also shut him out from hers. Resentment at that had made it hard for her to play for him at all, at first. But she had overcome that, and had been able to make music mean much to them both. They loved especially the music which seemed to translate for them things within their own hearts.