"What?" said his brother. "Live smoothly, or live at all, without regard to other people." "It is of the world at large I was speaking," said Elizabeth. "Of course there are some few, a very few, whose word -- and whose thought -- one would care for and strive for, -- that is not what I mean." "And who are those few fine persons?" said Mr. Herder significantly. "He is unhappy that doesn't know one or two," Elizabeth answered with infinite gravity. "And the opinions of the rest of men you would despise?" said Rufus. "Utterly! -- so far as they trenched upon my freedom of action." "You can't live so," said Rufus shaking his head. "I _will_ live so, if I live at all." "Wint'rop, you do not say nozing," said the naturalist. "What need, sir?" "Dere is always need for everybody to say what he thinks," said Mr. Herder. "Here we have all got ourselves in a puzzle, and we don't know which way we stand." "I am afraid every man must get out of that puzzle for himself, sir." "Is it a puzzle at all?" said Elizabeth facing round upon him. "Not when you have got out of it." "Well, what's the right road out of it?" "Break through everything in the way," said Rufus. "That seems to be the method in favour." "What do you think is the _right_ way?" Elizabeth repeated without looking at the last speaker. "If you set your face in the right quarter, there is always a straight road out in that direction," Winthrop answered with a little bit of a smile. "Doesn't that come pretty near my rule?" said Elizabeth with a smile much broader. "I think not. If I understood, your rule was to make a straight road out for yourself in any direction." Elizabeth laughed and coloured a little, with no displeased expression. The laugh subsided and her face became very grave again as the gentlemen made their parting bows. The brothers walked home in silence, till they had near reached their own door. "How easily you make a straight way for yourself anywhere!" Rufus said suddenly and with half a breath of a sigh. "What do you mean?" said Winthrop starting. "You always did." "What?" "What you pleased." "Well?" said Winthrop smiling. "You may do it now. And will to the end of your life." "Which seems to afford you somehow a gloomy prospect of contemplation," said his brother. "Well -- it does -- and it should." "I should like to hear you state your premises and draw your conclusion." Rufus was silent and very sober for a little while. At last he said, "Your success and mine have always been very different, in everything we undertook." "Not in everything," said Winthrop. "Well -- in almost everything." "You say I do whatever I please. The difficulty with you sometimes, Will, is that you do not 'please' hard enough." "It would be difficult for anybody to rival you in that," Rufus said with a mingling of expression, half ironical and half bitter. "You please so 'hard' that nobody else has a chance." To which Winthrop made no answer.