She began to put him in training, as she thought, for the help he was to give her with her loved poor. "What a silly!" exclaims a common-minded girl-reader. "That was not the way to land her fish!" But let those who are content to have fishy husbands, net or hook and land them as they can; a woman has more in herself than any husband can give her, though he may take much from her. Lord Gartley had no real conception of her outlook on life, and regarded all her endeavor as born of the desire to perfect his voice and singing. With such teaching he must, he imagined, soon become her worthy equal. He had no notion of the sort of thing genius is. Few have. They think of it as something supreme in itself, whereas it is altogether dependent on truth in the inward parts. It may last for a time separated from truth, but it dies its life, not lives it. Its utterance depends on enthusiasm; all enthusiasm depends on love and nobility of purpose; and love and nobility depend upon truth--that is, live truth. Not millions of years, without an utter regeneration of nature, could make such a man as Gartley sing like Hester. His faculties were in the power of decay, therefore of the things that pass; Hester was of the powers that give life, and keep things going and growing. She sang because of the song that was in her soul. Her music came out of her being, not out of her brain and her throat. If such a one as Gartley can sing, there is no reason why he should be kept singing. In all the arts the man who does not reach to higher things falls away from the things he has. The love of money will ruin poet, painter, or musician. For Hester the days now passed in pleasure. I fear the closer contact with lord Gartley, different he was in her thought from what he was in his own best, influenced at least the _rate_ of her growth towards the upper regions. We cannot be heart and soul and self in the company of the evil--and the untrue is the evil, however beheld as an angel of light in the mirage of our loving eyes, without sad loss. Her prayers were not so fervent, her aspirations not so strong. I see again the curl on the lip of a certain kind of girl-reader! Her judgment here is but foolishness. She is much too low in the creation yet, be she as high-born and beautiful as a heathen goddess, to understand the things of which I am writing. But she has got to understand them--they are not mine--and the understanding may come in dread pain, and dire dismay. Hester was one of those who in their chambers are not alone, but with him who seeth in secret; and not to get so near to God in her chamber--I can but speak in human figure--did not argue well for the new relationship. But the Lord is mindful of his own. He does not forget because we forget. Horror and pain may come, but not because he forgets--nay, just because he does not forget. That is a thing God never does.