The Glory of the Conquered | Page 5

there better reason for working than that? I can work now as I never did before, for don't I want to prove to this old world that I appreciate its bringing me to you? And you'll teach me about this art of yours, won't you, my little girl with the long, serious name? I'm ignorant, sweetheart, I don't know much about pictures, but don't you think that I can learn? Why, liebchen, I'm learning already! I never knew what they meant by lights and shadows until I saw your face.
"But tell me, how does it happen your hair grows back from your temples that way? Why, no one else's hair does that. And where did you learn about tilting your chin forward like that and looking straight out of your eyes at one? It is so strange--no one else does any of those things. I've often thought of the many things in science I do not understand and never will, but they are the very simplest things imaginable in comparison with that puzzling way you smile, the wonderful way your face lights up when you are happy.
"Are you looking up at the stars? I think you are. And in the heavens do you see one newly discovered, unvanishable star? That is the star of our love, dear,--the star which has changed heaven and earth. Are you dreaming about it all?--Oh but I know you are. I will fulfill those dreams, dear girl. I have waited for you too long, I prize you too inestimably not to consecrate my life to the fulfilling of those dreams."

CHAPTER III
KARL
He was one of the men who go before. Out in the great field of knowledge's unsurveyed territory he worked--a blazer of the trail, a voice crying from the wilderness: "I have opened up another few feet. You can come now a little farther." Then they would come in and take possession, soon to become accustomed to the ground, forgetting that only a little while before it had been impassable, scarcely thinking of the little body of men who had opened the way for them, and now were out farther, where again the way was blocked, trying to beat down a few more of the barriers, open up a little more of that untrodden territory. And only the little band itself would ever know how stony that path, how deep the ditches, how thick and thorny the underbrush. "Why this couldn't have been so bad," the crowd said, after it had flocked in--"strange it should have taken so long!"
Not that the little band sought popular acclaim, or desired it. "Heavens!" he had once exclaimed to a laboratory assistant, after a reporter had been vainly trying to persuade him to "tell the whole story of his work in popular vein,"--"you don't suppose medical research is going to become a drawing-room lap dog!"
But he need not have feared. A capricious fancy might rest upon them for the minute, but the big world which followed along behind would never come into any complete understanding of such as they. In an age of each man seeking what he himself can gain, how could there be understanding of the manner of man who would perhaps work all of his lifetime only to put up at the end the sign-board: "Do not take this road. I have gone over it and found it profitless." Failure is not the name they give to that. They say his wanderings astray brought others that much nearer to the goal.
In his last year at the medical school one of his professors had put it to him like this: "You must make your choice. It is certain you can not do both. You will become a general practitioner, or you will go into the research work for which you have shown aptitude here. I am confident you would succeed as a surgeon. In that you would make more money, and, in all probability, a bigger name. That is certain. In this other, you take your chances. But if I were you, I would do whichever I cared for more."
That settled it, for he had long before heard the cry from the unknown: "Come out and take us! We are here--if only you know how to get us." There was in his blood that which thrilled to the thought of doing what had not been done before. With the abandonment of his intense and rugged nature, he yielded himself to the delights of the untravelled path.
At the time of his falling in love, Dr. Karl Hubers was thirty-nine years old. He had worked in European laboratories, notably the Pasteur Institute of Paris, and among men of his kind was regarded as one to be reckoned with. Within the profession his name already stood for vital things, and