"But, liebchen--who would be more apt to think about it than I? Doesn't my work teach oneness more than it teaches anything else? All the quarrelling comes through a failure to recognise the oneness. I often think of the different ways Goethe and Darwin got at evolution. Goethe had the poetic conception of it all right; Darwin worked it out step by step. Who's ahead? And which has any business scoffing at the other?" He went back to his notes, and her thoughts returned to the battles she had heard fought in the name of science. She looked about the room, out at the great buildings all around, and then back to Karl, who seemed soul of it all. How different all this was! What would her father think to hear a man like Karl Hubers giving to a poet place in the developing of the theory of evolution? What _was_ the difference between Karl and her father? Was it that the school to which they belonged was itself changing, or was it just a difference in type? Or, perhaps, most of all, was it not a difference in degree? Her father had only seen a little way, and that down a narrow path bounded by high walls of bigotry. Karl had reached the heights from which he could see the oneness! And was it not love had helped him to those heights? A little later, when Karl was seeking to explain what he evidently regarded as a very simple little thing, and just as a few glimmers of light were beginning to penetrate her darkness, she looked up and at the half open door saw a boy whose consternation at sight of her made it difficult for Ernestine to repress a smile. "Come in, Beason," said Karl, who had just noticed him. "I want you to meet Mrs. Hubers." Ernestine looked at Karl suspiciously--something in his voice signified he was enjoying something. But there was nothing about Mr. Beason which signified any kind of enjoyment. He advanced to meet her sturdily, as one determined to do his duty at any cost. The boy was rendered peculiar in appearance by an abnormally long, heavy jaw, which gave his face a heavy, stolid appearance which might or might not be characteristic. He had small, sharp eyes, and Ernestine was quite sure from one look at his face that he did not laugh often, or see many things to laugh about. He was not impenetrable to graciousness, however, for within five minutes he had told her that he was born in southern Indiana, that he lived in Minneapolis now, and that he had come to Chicago to get some work with Dr. Hubers. Upon hearing that Ernestine immediately noticed what a remarkably intelligent face he had, and felt sure that that heavy jaw gave him a phlegmatic look which was most misleading. Karl laughed as the boy went away. "Funny fellow--Beason. He'll have to cut away a lot of the trees before he gets a good look at the woods. Never in his life has one gleam of humour penetrated him. In fact if a few humour cells were to creep in by mistake, they'd be so alien as to make a tremendous disturbance."