As soon as Constance leaves, I am going to work.  I haven’t told any one, for when I hinted at it, Constance was terribly upset, and asked me to live with her and Gordon.  Grace wants me to go to Paris with her; Barry and Leila have stated that I can have a home with them.

But I don’t want a home with anybody.  I want to live my own life, as I have told you.  I want to try my wings.  I don’t believe you quite like the idea of my working.  Nobody does, not even Grace Clendenning, although Grace seems to understand me better than any one else.

Grace and I have been talking to-day about life as a great adventure.  And it seems to me that we have the right idea.  So many people go through life as just something to be endured, but I want to make things happen, or rather, if big things don’t happen, I want to see in the little things something that is interesting.  I don’t believe that any life need be common-place.  It is just the way we look at it.  I’m copying these words which I read in one of your books; perhaps you’ve seen them, but anyhow it will tell you better than I what I mean.

“But life is a great adventure, and the worst of all fears is the fear of living.  There are many forms of success, many forms of triumph.  But there is no other success that in any way approaches that which is open to most of the many men and women who have the right idea.  These are the men and the women who see that it is the intimate and homely things that count most.  They are the men and women who have the courage to strive for the happiness which comes only with labor and effort and self-sacrifice, and only to those whose joy in life springs in part from power of work and sense of duty.”

Aren’t those words like a strong wind blowing from the sea?  I just love them.  And I know you will.  I am so glad that I can talk to you of such things.  Everybody has to have a friend who can understand—­and that’s the fine thing about our friendship—­that we both have things to overcome, and that our letters can be reports of progress.

Of course the things which I have to overcome are just little fussy woman things—­but they are big to me because I am breaking away from family traditions.  All the women our household have followed the straight and narrow path of conventional living.  Even Grace does it, although she rebels inwardly—­but Aunt Frances keeps her to it.  Once Grace tried to be an artist, and she worked hard in Paris, until Aunt Frances swooped down and carried her off—­Grace still speaks of that time in Paris as her year out of prison.  You see she worked hard and met people who worked, too, and it interested her.  She had a studio apartment, and was properly chaperoned by a little widow who went with her and shared her rooms.