ew a long breath.

"Have you made any plans?" she asked him presently.

"Yes," he said, the words coming in jets, with pauses between; "I will
take the grey mare--I will travel first--I will see the world--then I
will find work."

"What work?"

"I do not know."

She made a little impatient movement.

"That is no plan; travel--see the world--find work! If you go into the
world aimless, without a definite object, dreaming--dreaming, you will
be definitely defeated, bamboozled, knocked this way and that. In the
end you will stand with your beautiful life all spent, and nothing to
show. They talk of genius--it is nothing but this, that a man knows
what he can do best, and does it, and nothing else. Waldo," she said,
knitting her little fingers closer among his, "I wish I could help you;
I wish I could make you see that you must decide what you will be
and do. It does not matter what you choose--be a farmer, businessman,
artist, what you will--but know your aim, and live for that one thing.
We have only one life. The secret of success is concentration; wherever
there has been a great life, or a great work, that has gone before.
Taste everything a little, look at everything a little; but live for
one thing. Anything is possible to a man who knows his end and moves
straight for it, and for it alone. I will show you what I mean," she
said, concisely; "words are gas till you condense them into pictures."

"Suppose a woman, young, friendless as I am, the weakest thing on God's
earth. But she must make her way through life. What she would be she
cannot be because she is a woman; so she looks carefully at herself and
the world about her, to see where her path must be made.

"There is no one to help her; she must help herself. She looks. These
things she has--a sweet voice, rich in subtile intonations; a fair,
very fair face, with a power of concentrating in itself, and giving
expression to, feelings that otherwise must have been dissipated in
words; a rare power of entering into other lives unlike her own, and
intuitively reading them aright. These qualities she has. How shall she
use them? A poet, a writer, needs only the mental; what use has he for
a beautiful body that registers clearly mental emotions? And the painter
wants an eye for form and colour, and the musician an ear for time and
tune, and the mere drudge has no need for mental gifts.

"But there is one art in which all she has would be used, for which they
a