'All good painters succeed,' said the girl, who had never seen a painter before or any painting save her own coloured engravings. 'You are a good painter, Roland. You must succeed. You will become a great painter in everybody's estimation.' 'I will take your words for an oracle,' he said. 'When I am melancholy, and the future looks dark, I will say, "Thus and thus spoke Armorel."' The young man who is about to attempt fortune by the pursuit of Art must not consider too long the wrecks that strew the shores and float about the waters, lest he lose self-confidence. Continually these wrecks occur, and there is no insurance against them: yet continually other barques hoist sail and set forth upon their perilous voyage. It may be reckoned as a good point in this aspirant that he was not over-confident. 'Some are wrecked at the outset,' he said. 'Others gain a kind of success. Heavens! what a kind! To struggle all their lives for admission to the galleries, and to rejoice if once in a while a picture is sold.' 'They are not the good painters,' the girl of large experience again reminded him. 'Am I a good painter?' he replied, humbly. 'Well, one can but try to do good work, and leave to the gods the rest. There is luck in things. It is not every good man who succeeds, Armorel. To every man, however, there is allotted the highest stature possible for him to reach. Let me be contented if I grow to my full height.' 'You must, Roland. You could not be contented with anything less.' 'To reach one's full height, one must live for work alone. It is a hard saying, Armorel. It is a great deal harder than you can understand.' 'If you love your work, and if you are happy in it----' said the girl. 'You do not understand, child, Most men never reach their full height. You can see their pictures in the galleries--poor, stunted things. It is because they live for anything rather than their work. They are pictures without a soul in them.'