Hours had passed, and still she could not master the sobs. It seemed no one had ever been as cruel as Dr. Parkman had been to her that afternoon. Karl would understand!--and in her passionate need of Karl's understanding she turned at last to the letter of which she had spoken, the letter which always seemed a little like Karl's voice speaking from out the silence. Old and worn and blurred with the grief spent upon it, the letter bore upon itself the record of the year's desolation. It had lived through things never to be told,--never to be comprehended. "Lonesome days, liebchen,"--he had written. "It would seem almost like a rush of light to feel you standing in the doorway now. "My letters which I send you will tell you I am well, getting along all right, that I love you. These are some other things. If I think they will hurt you, I will not let you see them. But I will feel better to get them said, and of course the easiest way to say them is to say them to you. "I can't write. I wish I could. There are things 'way back in my thoughts I should like to say, and say right. For I've done some thinking this year, liebchen--while I sat here writing text-books there came a good many thoughts. "Text-books--any fool can write them! Lectures on what other men have done--what do I care about them? I'll do it, for I have to, but I want somebody to know--I want _you_ to know that I know it doesn't amount to a hill of beans! "Liebchen, you hear a lot of talk about the beauties of resignation. Don't you ever believe any of it. We don't get resigned to things that really count. But what we do get, is courage to bear them. I'm not resigned and I don't want to be! But I will try to be game about it, and we can't be game while we are sore. I know that because the times I've been least game are the times I was most sore. Wonder if anybody can make any sense out of that? "Life's queer--you can't get around that. Making us one thing and then making us be another. What are we to think of it, liebchen? Seems as if we could get on better if we could just get a line on the scheme of things, understand what it is all about, and the why. Or isn't there any why? I like a why for things. It gives them their place. I don't like disorder, and senselessness, and if there isn't any why--why then--See what I'm getting at? "What are you going to do when your force pushes you on to a thing which is closed to you? Stop the force? Well, doesn't that stop yourself? Turn it somewhere else? Easy to say in working out a philosophy,--not so easy to do. "Where's the end of it?--that's what I want to know. I'm one of those practical chaps who wants to see an end in sight. "Ernestine, light's a great thing. Light's _the_ great thing. I never knew that until I went blind. You have to stay a long time in the darkness to know just what it is light means.