"And if not Five?" "Then, maybe, I shall meet with Three." "But even this may be hard to find, and if you should not meet with Three, what then will you do?" "One Neophyte would not be able to protect himself." In communicating to her the results of his calculations, he had said that owing to the propensities indulged in certain of her former lives, she had made for herself a destiny which ensured suffering and failure, except when living in a similar manner; doing which she would have a life of unbounded success. "But," he continued, "your horoscope has nothing for you but misfortune so long as you persist in a virtuous course of life, and, indeed, it is now too late to adopt another. I speak herein according to your Fortune, not in regard to your Inner life. With that I have no concern. I tell you what is forecast for you on the material and actual planisphere of your Nativity.... I see nothing but misfortune before you. Yea, if you persist in virtue, it is not unlikely that you may be stript of all your worldly goods, and of all you possess, and this evil fortune will follow your nearest associates." To her enquiry, "Can I never overcome this evil prognostic?" he replied that she could do so only by outliving the time appointed for her natural life in the career indicated, and added this advice, "Steel yourself; learn to suffer; become a Stoic; care not. If Misfortune be yours, make it your Fortune. Let Poverty become to you Riches. Let Loss be Gain. Let Sickness be Health. Let Pain be Pleasure. Let Evil Report be Good Report. Yea, let Death be Life. Fortune is in the Imagination. If you believe you have all things, they are truly yours." He concluded with an explanation reconciling destiny with free will, and vindicating the divine justice, in a manner which removed all our difficulties on those points, and, as we later came to learn, was entirely in accordance with the Hindu doctrine of "Karma," of which at this time we had never heard[61].