a foolish kind of toy, and wonder that any man should think that he can please me by giving the labor of his soul to making them.  It is much the same thing as I feel, for instance, when I go to hear a master of music, and find that he has spent his hours in torturing himself and his fingers in order to give me an acrobatic exhibition, when all the time what I wish him to do, and what his genius gave him power to do, was to find the magic word that should set free the slumbering demon of my soul.  So I think that a man who wishes to grow by sympathy and worship should do without wealth, if only because it is so trivial; but of course I have left unmentioned what is the great reason for a self-denying life, the reason that lies at the heart of the matter, and that includes all the others in it,—­that he who lives by prayer and joy makes all men richer, but he who takes more than his bare necessity of the wealth of the body must know that he robs his brother when he does it.  The things of the soul are everywhere, but wealth stands for the toil and suffering of human beings, and thousands must starve and die so that one rich man may live at ease.  That is no fine rhetoric that I am indulging in, but a very deep and earnest conviction of my soul; first of all facts of morality stands the law that the life of man is labor, and that he who chooses to live otherwise is a dastard.  He may chase the phantom of happiness all his days and not find it, and yet never guess the reason,—­that joy is a melody of the heart, and that he is playing upon an instrument that is out of tune.  Few people choose to think of that at all, but I cannot afford ever to forget it, for my task is to live the artist’s life, to dwell close to the heart of things; it is something that I simply cannot understand how any man who pretends to do that can know of the suffering and starving that is in the world, and can feel that he who has God’s temple of the soul for his dwelling, has right to more of the pleasures of earth than the plainest food and shelter and what tools of his art he requires.  If it is otherwise it can only be because he is no artist at all, no lover of life, but only a tradesman under another name, using God’s high gift to get for himself what he can, and thinking of his sympathy and feeling as things that he puts on when he goes to work, and when he is sure that they will cost him no trouble.”

Mr. Howard had been speaking very slowly, and in a deep and earnest voice; he paused for a moment, and then added with a slight smile, “I have been answering your question without thinking about it, Miss Davis, for I have told you all that there is to tell about my life.”

Helen did not answer, but sat for a long time gazing at him and thinking very deeply; then she said to him, her voice shaking slightly:  “You have answered only half of my question, Mr. Howard; I want you to tell me what a woman can do to bring those high things into her life—­to keep her soul humble and strong.  I do not think that I have your courage and self-reliance.”