94. A woman of extraordinary beauty and talent, possessed of the rarest qualities of mind and soul, was one day asked by a friend, to whom she seemed the most perfect creature on earth: "What are your plans? Can any man be worthy of your love? Your future puzzles me. I cannot conceive a destiny that shall be lofty enough for a soul such as yours." He knew but little of destiny. To him, as to most men, it meant thrones, triumphs, dazzling adventures: these things seemed to him the sum of a human destiny; whereby he did but prove that he knew not what destiny was. And, in the first place, why this disdain of to-day? To disdain to-day is to prove that yesterday has been misunderstood. To disdain to-day is to declare oneself a stranger, and what can you hope to do in a world where you shall ever pass as a stranger? To-day has this advantage over yesterday, that it exists and was made for us. Be to-day what it will, it has wider knowledge than yesterday; and by that alone does it become more beautiful, and vaster. Why should we think that the woman I speak of would have known a more brilliant destiny in Venice, Florence, or Rome? Her presence might have been sought at magnificent festival, and her beauty have found a fitting surrounding in exquisite landscape. She might have had princes and kings, the elect of the world, at her feet; and perhaps it had needed but one of her smiles to add to a great nation's gladness, to ennoble or chasten the thought of an epoch. Whereas here all her life will be spent among four or five people--four or five souls that know of her soul, and love her. It may be that she never shall stir from her dwelling; that of her life, of her thoughts, and the strength that is in her, there will remain not a trace among men. It may be that her beauty, her force and her instinct for good, will be buried within her: in her heart and the hearts of the few who are near. And even then, and if this be so, the soul of this woman doubtless shall find its own thing to do. The mighty gates through which we must pass to a helpful and noteworthy life no longer grate on their hinges with the deafening clamour of old. They are smaller, perhaps, than they were; less vast and imposing; but their number is greater to-day, and they admit us, in silence, to paths that extend very far. And even though the home of this woman be not brightened by one single gleam from without, will she have failed to fulfil her destiny because her life is lived in the shade? Cannot destiny be beautiful and complete in itself, without help from without? As the soul that has truly conquered surveys the triumphs of the past, it is glad of those only that brought with them a deeper knowledge of life and a nobler humility; of those that lent sweeter charm to the moments when love, glory, and enthusiasm having faded away, the fruit that a few hours of boiling passion had ripened was gathered in meditation and silence. When the feasting is over: when charity,