He crushed her to him very close. He wanted to bring her more close than she had ever come before. For he needed her as he had not needed her until this hour. "Ernestine! Ernestine!"--the sob in his voice was not to be denied--"What am I going to do?" "Karl,"--after her moment of passionate silence--"tell me this. Doesn't it get any better? One bit easier?" "No!"--that would have no denying; and then: "Oh but I'm the brute to talk to you like this, after you've been"--again he swept her into his arms--"what you have been to me this summer." She guided him to a chair and knelt beside him. She held his hand for a minute as the mother holds the hand of the child in pain. And then she began, her voice tender, but quietly determined: "Karl dear--let's be honest. Let's not do so much pretending with each other. For just this once let's look it right in the face. I want to understand--oh how I want to! What's the very worst of it, dear? Is it--the work?" "Yes!"--the word leaped out as though let loose from a long bondage. "Ernestine--no one but a man can quite see that. What _is_ a man without a man's work? What is there for him to do but sit around in namby-pamby fashion and be fussed over and coddled and cheered up! Lord"--he threw away her hands and turned his face from her--"I'd rather be dead!" Her utter silence recalled him to a sense of how she must be hurt. Could he have looked into her eyes just then he would never have ceased to regret those words. There was contrition in his face as he turned back. He reached out for her hands--those faithful, loving hands he had thrust away. For just a minute she did not give them, but that was only for the minute--so quick was she to forgive, so eager to understand. "Forget that, sweetheart--quick. I didn't know what I was saying. Why, liebchen--it's only you makes it bearable at all. If I did not have you I should--choose the other way." "Karl!"--in an instant clinging to him wildly--"you hadn't thought--you couldn't think--" "Oh, sweetheart--you've misunderstood. Now, dearie--don't--don't make me feel I've made you cry. All I meant, Ernestine, was that without you it would be so utterly unbearable." He stroked her hair until she was quiet. "Why, liebchen--do you think anything under heaven could be so bad that I should want to leave you?" "I should hope I had not failed--quite that completely," she whispered brokenly. "Failed?--_You?_ Come up here a little closer and I'll try to tell you just how far you've come from having failed."