And then a long and very precious silence. She was filled with many things too deep for utterance, even had she been free to speak. She thought of her birthday night a year before, their happiness then, all that had come to them since, all that love had meant, the great things it was to do for them. She looked at Karl's face--his fine, strong face which seemed the very soul of the mellow fire-light. How would that dear face look when she told him what she had done? Convinced him that great things were before him now? Would it not be that his determination not to fail her would stir fires which, even in his most triumphant days, had slumbered? But from exultation in all that, she passed to the heart's pain in leaving him. She moved a little closer, took his hand and rested it lovingly against her cheek. She had never been away from Karl. Tears came at the thought of it now. And he must have been thinking of what Ernestine had meant to him in the last year, for of a sudden he stooped down and with his old abandonment, with all the fullness of the first passion and the tender understanding of these later days, gathered her into his arms. "Oh, Ernestine," he whispered--breathing into her name all that was in his heart--"_Ernestine!_" CHAPTER XXXIV ALMOST DAWN She found that in the beginning at least it was as Dr. Parkman had said. It was good to sleep. It was good to go to bed at night with the sense of nothing to do in the morning, good to wake at the usual time only to feel she might go back to that comfortable, beautiful sleep. For Ernestine was indeed very tired. Since that day when the great idea had come to her there had been no time when she was free from the sense of all that lay before her. But now she could rest. Strangely enough she did not worry greatly about Karl. Her first waking thoughts were of him, but fuller consciousness always brought the feeling that it was all right with Karl; he was missing her, of course, but she was going back to him very soon and bring him the things he had believed shut away forever;--bring him the light!--that was the way she had come to think of it. The deliciousness of her rest was in the sense of its being right she should take it; she could best serve Karl by resting until she was her strongest self. Her room was so quiet and restful, the bed so comfortable, and Mrs. Rolfe, Dr. Parkman's old nurse, so good to her. It was soothing to be told to close her pretty eyes and go to sleep, sustaining to be met with--"Now here is something for our little lady to eat." After many days of responsibility it was good to be "mothered" a little.