"How--sick?" she repeated as he stood there looking at her helplessly. And, finally, he said, as if it were killing him to do it--"So sick that--" "Don't say that!"--she fairly hissed it at him. "Don't _dare_ say that! You _did_ it--you----" And then, sinking down beside him, catching hold of his hand, she sobbed out, wildly, heartbreakingly--"Oh, Dr. Parkman--oh, please--_please_ tell me you _will_ save Karl!" Her sobs were becoming uncontrollable. "Ernestine," he said, sharply--"be quiet. Be quiet! You have got to help." The sobs stopped; she rose to her feet. He pulled up a chair for her, but she did not sit down. A few sobs still came, but her face was becoming stern, set. "Tell me," she said, holding her two hands tight against her breast, and looking him straight in the face. And then he jerked it out. Karl had been taken ill--pain, fever, he feared appendicitis. He had two other doctors see him; they agreed that he must be operated on immediately. They brought him here. They found--conditions awful. They did all that surgery could do--every known thing was being done now, but--they did not know. He had rallied a little from the operation; now he seemed to be drooping. He was in bad shape generally,--heart weakened by the shock of his blindness, intestines broken down by lack of exercise, whole system affected by changed conditions--all these things combined against him. He told the short story with his own lips white, swaying a little, seeming fairly to age as he stood there. Her face had been changing as she listened. He had never seen a human face look as hers did then; he had never heard a human voice sound as hers sounded when she said: "Dr. Parkman, you are mistaken." She looked him straight in the eye--a look which held the whole force of her being. "I say you are mistaken. We will go back in here now to Karl. You and I together are going to save him." There was the light from higher worlds in her eye as she went back, in her voice a force which men have never named or understood. And something which emanated from her took hold of every one who came into that room. There was more than the resources of medical science at work now. On her knees beside the bed, her arm about him, passionately shielding him from the dark forces around him, her face often touching his as if reassuring him, Ernestine spoke to Karl, quietly, tenderly, forcefully, love's own intuition telling her how much to say, when to speak. By her warm body which loved him, by her great spirit which claimed him, she would hold him from the outgoing tide. Her voice could rouse him where other stimulants failed; the only effort he made was the tightening of his hand over hers, and sometimes he smiled a little as he felt her close to him.