of a man, and doing anything in the world as a man does,—­what would they do with two businesses?  The whole vexed question solved itself to her mind in this home-fashion.  “It isn’t natural; there never will be much of it in the world,” she said.  “Young women, with their real womanhood in them, won’t; and by the time they’ve lived on and found out, the chances will be over.  To do business as a man does, you must choose as a man does,—­for your whole life, at the beginning of it.”

Ray Ingraham, with all her capacity and courage, at this turning-point where choice was given her, and duty no longer showed her one inevitable way, chose deliberately to be a woman.  She took up a woman’s lot, with all its uncertainty and disadvantage; the lot of working for others.

“I can find something simply to do and to be paid for; that will be safe and faithful; that will leave room.”

She said something like that to Frank Sunderline, when he sat talking with her over some building accounts one evening.

He had come in as a friend and had helped them in many little ways; beside having especial occasion in this matter, as representing his own employer who held a small demand against the estate.

“I am too young,” she told him.  “Dot is too young.  I should feel as if I must have her with me if I kept on, and we should need to keep all the little money together.  How can I tell what Dot—­how can I tell what either of us”—­she changed her word with brave honesty, “might have a wish for, before seven years were over?  If I were forty years old, and could do it, I would; I would take girls for journeymen,—­girls who wanted work and pay; then they would be brought up to a very good business for women, if they came to want business and they would be free, while they were girls, for happier things that might happen.”

“That is good Woman’s Rights doctrine; it doesn’t leave out the best right of all.”

“A woman can’t shape out her life all beforehand, as a man can; she can’t be sure, you see; and nobody else could feel sure about her.  I suppose that is what has kept women out of the real business world,—­the ordering and heading of things.  But they can help.  I’m willing to help, somehow; and I guess the world will let me.”

There was something that went straight to Frank Sunderline’s deepest, unspoken apprehension of most beautiful things, in Ray Ingraham’s aspect as she said these words.  The man in him suddenly perceived, though vaguely, something of what God meant when He made the woman.  Power shone through the beauty in her face; but power ready to lay itself aside; ready to help, not lead.  Made the most tender, because most perfect outcome and blossom of humanity, woman accepts her conditions, as God Himself accepts his own, when He hides Himself away under limitations, that the secret force may lie ready to the work man thinks he does upon the earth and with it.  In dumb, waiting nature, his own very Self bides subject; yes, and in the things of the Spirit, He gives his Son in the likeness of a servant.  He lays help upon him; He lays help for man upon the woman.  He took her nearest to Himself when He made her to be a help meet in all things to his Adam-child.  To “help” is to do the work of the world.