"Yes, and do you ever think of it like that? Do you ever think of the lives and homes he is going to save; the tragedies and heartbreaks he is going to avert; the children he is going to keep from being motherless or fatherless if he does do this thing?--and I believe with all my heart he will! I tell you, Mrs. Hubers, you want to help him! I'm not sorry you saw that little thing just now. It will show you the other side of it--the human side. And there wasn't anything unusual in it. All over the world, physicians are doing this same thing every day--telling people it's hopeless, admitting there's nothing to be done. Then think of the tremendousness of this work Karl Hubers is doing!--where it strikes--the hearts breaking for it--the thousands praying for it! Is it any wonder we're watching it? Interested? I tell you _we_ know what it means." She was unconscious of the tear on her cheek, of the quivering of her face. "And Karl is doing that? _That_ is what Karl's work means?" "Karl's work simply means giving into our hands the power to save more lives. Now we're doing the best we can with what we have--but God knows we're short on power! We're groping around in the dark. Karl's work means letting in the light." His voice had grown warm. Something had fallen from him--leaving him himself. In his eyes was a wealth of unspeakable feeling. "Doctor, I want to thank you!"--but it was her face thanked him most eloquently. She was glad when he left her for a minute before they finally went away. Her heart was very full. This was Karl! This the real meaning of Karl's work! To think she had looked at it in that small, paltry way--that even in her thoughts she had put the slightest stumbling block in his path. This very afternoon had come new inspiration and she had resented it, had said small, mean things in her heart because he stayed to work out his precious thoughts. Why, it would have been fairly criminal for Karl to run away from that call of his work! She wanted to tell him all about it; she yearned to "make it up to him," make him more happy than he had ever been before. She dwelt upon it all until, when Dr. Parkman came in for her, he was startled at the light shining from her face. CHAPTER X KARL IN HIS LABORATORY One of their favourite speculations, as the days went on, was as to whether any one had ever been so happy before. They argued it from all sides, in a purely unprejudiced and dispassionate manner, and always arrived at the conclusion that of course no one ever had. "Because," Ernestine would say, "no one ever had so many reasons for being happy." "And if they had," he would respond, "they would have said something about it."