"But don't you _see_ The keynote of it is that stubborn grip on the broken sword. I should think every fighter would love it for that. And it is more than the glory of the good fight. It is the glory of the unconquerable will. Look at the woman's face! The world calls him beaten. _She_ knows that he has won. I see behind it the world's battlefields--'way back from the first I see them all, and I see that the thing which has shaped the world is not the success or failure of individual battles one-half so much as it is this wresting of victory from defeat by simply _breathing_ victory even after the sword has been broken in the hand. What we call victory and defeat are incidents--things individual and temporal. The thing universal and eternal is this immortality of the spirit of victory. Why, every time I look at that grip on the broken sword,"--laughing now, but eyes shining--"I can feel the world take a bound ahead!" CHAPTER VII ERNESTINE IN HER STUDIO The next morning she went to work. She had never wanted anything with quite the eagerness that she wanted to work that morning. "What I want to know is," Georgia had demanded the night before, "did either of you do any work? I hear a great deal about quaint little villages and festive cafes, but what did you actually do?" Now if Georgia were only here to repeat the question, she could answer jubilantly: "What did I do? Why, I got ready for this morning! Wasn't that a fine year's work?" It had seemed queer at first. "Why don't I work," she would ask Karl, "now that I am here where I always wanted to be?" But Karl would only laugh, and say that was too obvious to explain. Once he had talked a little about it. "I wouldn't worry, liebchen. Isn't it possible that the creative instinct is being all used up? It's your dream time, sweetheart. It's your time to do nothing but love. After a while you'll turn to the work, and you'll do things easily then that were hard to do before." How had he known? For nothing had ever been more true than that. She knew this morning that she could do things easily now which had been hard to do before. One of the very best things about this curious, old-fashioned house was that it had an attic which had all the possibilities of a studio. Just a little remodeling--and Paris itself could do no better. To that attic she turned just as soon as Karl had gone over to the university. Her things had been carried up; now for a fine morning of sorting them out! But instead of attacking the unpacking and sorting and arranging she got no farther than a book of her sketches. Sitting down on the floor she spread them all around her. Despite the fact that she had not at once settled down to serious work, she made sketches everywhere, just rough, hasty little things--"bubbles of joy" she called them to Karl. It seemed now that these were counting for more than she had thought. Everything was counting for more than she had thought!