work, and hold my peace.'"

"Peace! Yes, there it is again!" said Rachel. "But no, no! I am sure you
are not right."

"Well, let me speak to you about yourself, Miss Garman," said Jacob
Worse, becoming more courageous. "Neither I nor any one else of your
acquaintance will be able to comply fully with the conditions you lay
down. But I know one person who has the power, and that, Miss Garman, is
yourself. You have all the qualifications we others lack."

"I! a woman! and, worse than all, a lady!" said Rachel, looking at him
with the greatest astonishment. "And how, if I may ask?"

"You must write!"

Rachel hesitated, and looked at him suspiciously. "That is not the first
time I have heard this. More than one person has mentioned it to me
before. I suppose it is that authorship is reckoned as one of the bad
habits of an emancipated woman."

Jacob Worse again began to lose his self-command. "I don't mind your
calling me a coward, Miss Garman. But when you think, or pretend to
think, that I am not speaking more seriously than some of these--"

"No, no; sit down, I beg you," said Rachel, anxiously, putting her hand
on his arm. "I did not mean any harm, but I am so suspicious. I beg
pardon. There, now, don't think any more about it. You really do think,
then, that I ought to write?"

"I am quite sure you ought," answered Worse, who soon became quiet
again. "You have so much originality and so much energy, that you will
be able to overcome every difficulty, and in courage you are certainly
not wanting."

Amid the whirl of the dance around them, these encouraging words sounded
doubly strange in her ears, and seemed to open out new vistas before
her.

"But what have I got to write about? What do I know that the world does
not know already? No, you really must be wrong, Mr. Worse. It is beyond
me;" and she looked down at her dress, and could not help feeling that
Worse was becoming rather dull.

"It is not very easy to say beforehand what your subject ought to be,"
said he; "but it is clear that there are endless things that the world
can only learn from a woman, and which it seems to be expecting to hear.
For you it is but to have the will. You are now passing through a crisis
in your life, and you have such a fund of energy--"

"You seem to be treating me more like a chemical equivalent than like a
human being, not to say like a lady," said Rachel, laughing.

"Let us be thankful that you have so little of the la