position in the world of letters--his kingdom of heaven. Well read, he
had not used his reading practically enough to perceive that the praise
of one generation may be the contempt of another, perhaps of the very
next, so that the repute of his time could assure him of nothing. He did
not know the worthlessness of the opinion that either grants or
withholds fame.

He looked through the dark at his cousin, thinking, "What sets her
talking of such things? How can a girl understand a man with his career
before him!"

She read him through the night and his silence.

"I know what you are thinking, Walter!" she said. "You are thinking
women can't think. But I should be ashamed not to have common sense, and
I can not see the sense of doing anything for a praise that can help
nothing and settle nothing."

"Why then should all men have the desire for it?"

"That they may get rid of it Why have all men vanity? Where would the
world be on the way to now, if Jesus Christ had sought the praise of
men?"

"But He has it!"

"Not much of it yet, I suspect. He does not care for the praise that
comes before obedience!--that's what I have heard your father say."

"I never heard him!"