“Oh,” cried Helen, rising up with sudden animation, almost pushing Lily’s kneeling figure from her, “go away from me with your good man! It is enough to make a person unjust, to make ye hate the name of good! How do you know whether they are good or no, one of them? Were they ever tempted like him? Had they ever the fire of hot thoughts in their head, or the struggle in their hearts? Was nature ever in them running free and wild like a great river, carrying the brigs and the dams away? or just a drumlie quiet stream, aye content in its banks, and asking no more? Oh, dinna speak to me of your good man! It’s blasphemy, it’s sacrilege, it’s the sin that will never be pardoned! There is but one man, be he good or bad, and one woman that is bound to do her best for him; and ill be her lot if she fails to do it, for it is not herself she will ruin,--that would matter little--the feckless creature, no worth her salt,--but him, too, but him, too!” She sat down again after this little outburst and dried her eyes. Lily, who had risen hurriedly to her feet, too, startled and almost angry, stood irresolute, not knowing how to reply, when Helen put out to her a trembling hand. “You are not to be troubled about me,” she said; “you are not to be angry at what I say. It is a comfort to speak out my mind. Who can I speak to, Lily? Not to my father, who stands between me and my life; not to _him_, that rages at me as you have heard because I cannot arise and follow him, as I would do if I could, to the end of the world. Oh, Lily, it is good for the heart, when it is full like mine, to speak. It takes away a little of the burden. ‘I leant my back until an aik’--do you mind the old song? You are not an oak, you’re only a lily-plant, but, oh! the comfort to lean on you, Lily, just for a moment, just till I get my breath.” “Say to me whatever you like, Helen; say any thing. I may not agree----” “I am not asking you to agree--how should you agree, you that know nothing? Oh, Lily, my bonnie Lily,” cried Helen, suddenly looking in her face, “am I speaking blasphemy, too? You may know more than I think; there is that in your face that was not there six months ago.” The color changed in Lily’s cheek, but she did not flinch. “If I know any thing,” she said, “it is not in your way, Helen. I am not the kind of woman that can change a man’s thoughts or his life. I am one that has no power. If I tried your way, I would fail. No one has changed a thought or a purpose in all my life for me. I am useless, useless. I have to do what other folk tell me, and wait other folk’s pleasure, and blow here and blow there like a straw in the wind. And I love it not, I love it not!” she cried. “It is as bad for me as for you.”