nd for silence as Eugene was about to speak--"it has only two
hundred acres. Now multiply it by six and you'll have New Eden out in
Kansas. And I own it. And I am going to manage it. And I am not going to
be dependent on anybody. Won't it be one big lark for me to go clear to
the Sage Brush Valley? If it is as beautiful as the Winnowoc, just think
of its possibilities. It will be perfectly grand to feel oneself so free
and self-reliant. And when we have won out, you by your brush and I by
my Kansas farm, then, oh, Gene, how splendid life will be!"

The big, dreamy eyes were full of light. The level beams of the sun
stretched far across green meadows and shaven lawns, between tall
lilac-trees, to the rose-arbor, just to glorify that rippling mass of
brown-shadowed golden hair.

"Jerry"--Eugene Wellington's voice trembled--"you are the most wonderful
girl in the world. I am so proud of you. But, dear girl, it is an old,
threadbare fancy, this going to Kansas to get rich. My father tried it
years ago. He had a vision of great things, too. He failed. Not only
that, he ruined everybody connected with him. That's why I'm poor
to-day. Truly, little cousin mine, I don't believe the good Lord, who
makes Edens like this in the Winnowoc Valley, ever intended for
well-bred people to leave them and go New-Eden-hunting in the Sage Brush
Valley. We belong here where all the beauty of nature is about us and
the care of a loving God is over us. Why do you want to go to Kansas? I
wouldn't know how to pray out there where my father made such a botch of
living. I really wouldn't."

"I don't know how to pray here, Gene," Jerry said, softly, with no trace
of flippant irreverence in her tone. "I forgot how to do that when God
took my father away. But listen to me." The imperious power of the
uncontrolled will was Jerry's always. "You don't _live_ here; you _stay_
here. And you take a piece of canvas and go to the ends of the earth on
it, or down to the deeps, or into the heavens. You make what never did
and never will be, with your free brush. And folks call it good and you
earn a living by it. You are an artist. I am a foolish dreamer, but I am
going out to Kansas and work my dreams into reality and beauty--and
money--in a New Eden. If the Lord isn't there, I shall not mind any more
than I do here. I am going to Kansas, though, because I _want_ to."

"Look, Jerry, at the sunset yonder," Eugene said, gently, knowing of old
what "I want" me