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
are all necessary--the delicate expressive body, the rich voice, the power
of mental transposition. The actor, who absorbs and then reflects from
himself other human lives, needs them all, but needs not much more. This
is her end; but how to reach it? Before her are endless difficulties:
seas must be crossed, poverty must be endured, loneliness, want. She must
be content to wait long before she can even get her feet upon the path. If
she has made blunders in the past, if she has weighted herself with a
burden which she must bear to the end, she must but bear the burden
bravely, and labour on. There is no use in wailing and repentance here:
the next world is the place for that; this life is too short. By our
errors we see deeper into life. They help us." She waited for a while.
"If she does all this--if she waits patiently, if she is never cast down,
never despairs, never forgets her end, moves straight toward it, bending
men and things most unlikely to her purpose--she must succeed at last. Men
and things are plastic; they part to the right and left when one comes
among them moving in a straight line to one end. I know it by my own