As she waited, her mind turned to the stories that office must hold. How much of anxiety and suffering and sorrow and tragedy--and occasional joy--it must know. The mothers who brought children whom others had declared incurable--how tense these moments of waiting must be for them! The husband and wife who came together to find out whether she would have to have the operation--how many of the crucial moments of life were lived in such places as this! The power in these doctors vested! The power of their voice, their slightest glance, in holding men from the brink of despair! Who could know the human heart better than they? They did not meet the every day men and women well groomed with restraints and pretence. For it was an hour when the soul was stripped bare that the doctor looked in upon it. Men were various things to various people, but to the doctor they came very close to being themselves. Too much was at stake to dissemble here. When phantoms of fear and death took shape in the shadows one sought the doctor--and told the truth. She had a fancy which moved her then. She saw the men like Dr. Parkman fighting darkness down in the valley, while from the mountain peak adjacent men like Karl turned on, as with mighty search-lights, more, and ever more, of the light. And what were the search-lights for if not to be turned down into the valley? "What time did you go to bed last night?" he demanded, after they had shaken hands in the inner office. "Why--did you see the light?" she faltered;--she had made a promise against late hours. "The light--no; but I see your face now, and that's enough. Was it two--or worse?" "Just a mere trifle worse. And truly, doctor--I didn't mean to. But don't you know it's hard to stop when you feel just right for a thing? Why, one can't always do things at the proper time," she expostulated. "No, and one can't always keep an abused nervous system from going to pieces either. Did you ever stop to think of that?" "But you'll look after the nervous system," she replied ingenuously. "Now that's where a lot of you make the mistake. I can't do anything at all without the cooperation of common-sense." "Well I'm intending to be real good from this on," she laughed. "But it is so important that I know everything!" He laughed then too. "A very destructive notion." "Tell me," he said, when he had settled himself in his chair in the particular way of settling himself when he intended having a talk with her, "have you been rewarded in all this by any pleasure in it whatsoever? I don't mean," he made clear, anticipating her, "just the pleasure of doing something for Karl. But has your work given you any enthusiasm for the thing in itself?" "Doctor--it has. And that was something I was afraid of. But you should have heard me talking to Mr. Ross the other day when he made one of his patronising remarks about mere science. I believe that when you work hard at almost anything you develop some enthusiasm for it."