King retires she shows her unabated attachment to her shepherd (12; ii. 6), and concludes by adjuring the court-ladies not to persuade her to transfer her affections to another (7). The SECOND section—ch. ii. 8; iii. 5—though apparently disconnected from the first, is found, upon investigation, to be a proper and natural sequence. The Shulamite, in rebutting the contempt of the court-ladies, had reflected with some severity upon her brothers for sending her to keep the vineyards; but this had been done merely to account for the darkness of her complexion; and having been interrupted in her warm address to her beloved, which she hastened to resume, she was obliged to be satisfied with this passing allusion to that event. It was natural, therefore, to expect that, at the first opportunity, she would state more circumstantially how her brothers came to be severe with her, and why they had made her a keeper of the vineyards, which she proceeds to do in this section. She tells the court-ladies that her brothers were displeased with her because they had overheard the shepherd inviting her to accompany him into the fields to enjoy together the charms of nature (8–14), on account of which, in their anxiety for her reputation, they changed her employment, told her to be a “keeper of the vineyards,” in order to separate her from her beloved (15). She, moreover, relates that they consoled themselves with the assurance that, though separated bodily, indissoluble ties subsisted between them, over which her brothers had no control (16); that she invited him to come again in the evening, when unobserved (17); and that, seeing he did not come, she went in search of him, &c. (ch. iii. 1–4). Having thus evinced her deep attachment for the shepherd, she again concludes by adjuring the court-ladies not to persuade her to transfer her affections to another (5). This section, therefore, follows the preceding one, to set forth the cause of the brother’s severity in having made her a “keeper of the vineyards,” and thus gives a further insight into her previous history.