It is all right for the superior sex to do skilled labor, but a true womanly woman must do only unskilled labor, and a fine lady none at all—­so clothed as to prevent it and so displayed as to prove it, thus advertising to the world that the man who pays for her can also pay for secretaries and all sorts of expensive things.  Is that the old idea?

If so I am afraid most college professors’ wives should give up the old-fashioned expensive pose of ladyhood and join the new womanhood!

Well, as it turned out, we were enabled to spend our sabbatical year abroad—­just in time to give Carl a new lease of life mentally and me physically; for both of us were on the verge of breaking down before we left.

Such a wonderful year!  Revisiting his old haunts; attending lectures together in the German and French universities; working side by side in the great libraries; and meeting the great men of his profession at dinner!  Then, between whiles, we had the best art and music thrown in!  Ah, those are the only real luxuries we miss and long for!  Indeed, to us, they are not really luxuries.  Beauty is a necessity to some persons, like exercise; though others can get along perfectly well without it and, therefore, wonder why we cannot too.

Carl’s book had already been discovered over there—­that is perhaps the only reason it was discovered later over here—­and every one was so kind about it.  We felt quite important and used to wink at each other across the table.  “Our” book, Carl always called it, like a dear.  His work was my work now—­his ambitions, my ambitions; not just emotionally or inspirationally, but intellectually, collaboratively.  And that made our emotional interest in each other the keener and more satisfying.  We had fallen completely in love with each other.  For the first time we two were really one.  Previously we had been merely pronounced so by a clergyman who read it out of a book.

Oh, the glory of loving some one more than oneself!  And oh, the blessedness of toiling together for something greater and more important than either!  That is what makes it possible for the other thing to endure—­not merely for a few mad, glad years, followed by drab duty and dull regret, but for a happy lifetime of useful vigor.  That, and not leisure or dignity, is the great compensation for the professorial life.

What a joy it was to me during that rosy-sweet early period of our union to watch Carl, like a proud mother, as he grew and exfoliated—­like a plant that has been kept in a cellar and now in congenial soil and sunshine is showing at last its full potentialities.  Through me my boy was attaining the full stature of a man; and I, his proud mate, was jealously glad that even his dear dead mother could not have brought that to pass.

His wit became less caustic; his manner more genial.  People who once irritated now interested him.  Some who used to fear him now liked him.  And as for the undergraduates who had hero-worshiped this former tennis champion, they now shyly turned to him for counsel and advice.  He was more of a man of the world than most of his colleagues and treated the boys as though they were men of the world too—­for instance, he never referred to them as boys.