"I sit sewing those little pieces together--a foolish thing to do, but one must be doing something, and as I think how useless it is there comes the thought of whether it is any more useless than all the other things in life. Is it any more useless than surgery? For can a great surgeon save his best friend? Is it any more useless than science--for can science do anything for her own? Is it any more useless than ambition and purpose and hope--for does not fate make sport of them all? Is it any more useless than books--for can books reach the hearts which need them most? Is it any more useless than art--for does art reach realities? Is it any more useless than light--for can light penetrate the real darkness? Is it,"--she wavered, quivered; she had been talking in low, quick voice, her eyes fixed on something straight ahead, as though reading her words out there before her. And now, as she held back, and he saw what she saw and could not say, he asked for her, slowly: "Is it any more useless than love?" CHAPTER XXXIX ASH HEAP AND ROSE JAR As she broke then to the sobs for which he had hoped, something of tremendous force stirred within the man; and he felt that if he could bring her from the outer darkness where she had been carried, back to the things which were her soul's own, that his own life, his whole life, with all of the dark things through which it had passed, would have found justification. He had tried to save Karl, and failed. But there was left Ernestine. And it seemed to him--he saw it simply, directly, unquestioningly--that after all he would not have failed Karl if he could do what it was in his heart to do now for her. Looking at her bowed head he saw it all--the complete overthrow, the rich field of life rendered barren waste. Barren waste--but was that true for Ernestine? Did there not remain for her the scent of the field? The memory of that glorious, luxuriant growth? With _him_ barren waste--but for her did there not grow in the field of life some things which were everlasting? With the quickness with which he saw everything he saw that it was the picture of his own barrenness could show her most surely the things which for her remained. He drew back from the thought as one draws away from the rude touch upon a wound. Lay bare the scars of his life that another profit by their ugliness? Years of habit were against it; everything fundamentally himself was against it. But he was a man who had never yet shrunk from the thing he saw was right to do. The cost of an accomplishment never deterred him from a thing he saw must be accomplished. With each second of listening to her sobs, he was becoming once more the man who masters, the man ruthless and unsparing in his purposefulness.