The Glory of the Conquered | Page 5

Alps--and we have our love. It must mean all those
eternal things to us. Don't you feel that it will?
"This train is rushing along jostling my hand so I can scarcely write.
But then my heart is rushing on jostling my brain so I can scarcely
think, so perhaps my handwriting matches my thoughts.
"And we'll work! We'll work to prove how much we love--is 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