"No, I was glad you sent them. It was thoughtful of you." She spoke low and seriously. "But do I quite understand?" She asked him several questions, modest but straightforward, with her grave eyes on his face. While he answered he was thinking, "To the pure, all things are pure." She dropped her eyes and sighed. "It is a dreadful story; it makes me very sad." Then after a minute she looked up again and asked: "What are you going to do?" He shook with vague apprehension, and leaned sidewise on the rock. "With her?" he asked. "I hardly know. I thought you would advise me. You cannot think I am under obligation to keep her any longer? I am not bound to her by any law." She did not answer for a minute or look at him. When she did, there was a strong fervor in her voice: "We are all bound; we are all under obligation to help, to guard, to seek and to save them that are lost." She stood before him. Her face was like the face of the angel of pity, her tones full of passionate pleading. "Did you take her ignorantly? Have you kept her only because the law made you? I know you better. What will become of her if you cast her off? She might be worse than she is." She turned away and shuddered. Her words pierced him the deeper because they were the same Cora had used, because they were his own smothered thoughts. He was silent, leaning against a great rock as he stood before her, and she went on, with rising passion: "And beware for your own sake. If you throw her off, she will draw you down with her, you and all--" she caught her breath--"all connected with you. You cannot punish her as a criminal. What could you say to justify your action? Think of the position you would stand in before the world, with your tongue tied. You could not bear it. In your heat you may think you could, but you might as well think to resist the sea. Beware lest in your haste you throw away the good you have gained. For you have gained. Your power over her is multiplied tenfold. Your freedom is your power. She must know she is in your hands now; the fences are all down. She will know she can no longer presume; her instincts of self-preservation will weigh on your side, and your forbearance be a perpetual restraint upon her. I think you have no good alternative, and that your duty is plain. Don't think I am hard; we have all our tasks that seem too heavy at times. We can't understand; 'His ways are past finding out.'" Her voice grew tremulous, and she held her face away a minute or two, but then looked up and smiled faintly: "'Theirs not to make reply; theirs not to reason why.' Who knows what great things you may accomplish yet?"