And it meant that the future was hers to take! She leaned forward as if looking into the coming years, eyes shining with aspiration, cheeks flushed with triumph. She quivered with desire--the desire to express what she knew was within her. It was while lost to her joy and her dreaming that she heard a step upon the stairs. She started up--instantly broken from the magic of the moment. Perhaps Karl needed her. And then before she reached the door she knew that it was Karl himself. How very strange! "Oh, Karl!"--not able to contain it a minute--"I want to tell you--" and then, startled as he stumbled a little, and going down a few steps to meet him--"but isn't there too much light up here? Shouldn't you stay down in the dark?" "I don't want to stay down in the dark!"--he said it with a low intensity which startled her, and then she laughed. "I've always heard there was nothing so perverse as a sick man. I'll tell you what's the matter with you. You're lonesome. You're tired of getting along without me--now aren't you? But we'll go down to the library, and down there I'll tell you--oh, _what_ I'll tell you! I thought Dr. Parkman was going to stay with you a while,"--as he did not speak--"or I shouldn't have come away." He had seated himself, and was rubbing his head, as though it pained him. His eyes were hidden, but his face, in this bright light, made her want to cry, it told so plainly of his suffering. He reached out his hand for hers. "I didn't want him any longer, liebchen,"--he said it much like a little child--"I want--you." "Of course you do,"--tenderly--"and I'm the one for you to have. But not up here. The light is too bright up here." She pulled at his hand as if to induce him to rise. But he made no movement to do so, and he did not seem to have heard what she said. "Ernestine," he said, in a low voice--there was something not just natural in Karl's voice, a tiredness, a something gone from it--"will you do something for me?" She sat down on the arm of his chair, her arm about him with her warm impulsiveness. "Why Karl, dear"--a light kiss upon his hair--"you know I would do anything in the world for you." "I want you to show me your pictures,"--he said it abruptly, shortly. "I want to look at them this morning;--all of them." "But--but Karl," she gasped, rising in her astonishment--"not _now_!" "Yes--now. You promised. You said you'd do anything in the world for me." "But not something that will hurt you!" "It won't hurt me,"--still abruptly, shortly. "But I know better than that! Why any one knows that eyes in bad condition mustn't be used. And looking at pictures--up here in this bright light--so needless--so crazy,"--she laughed, though she was puzzled and worried.