Now as Parolles departs, saying, "Get thee a good husband, and use him as he uses thee," Helena shows us the originality of her character by compelling love, that is usually of a habit so timid and retiring, to put it off and become adventurous. She chides the weakness of sitting still to mope and be macerated by passion. Something must be done to justify and consecrate it, to vindicate Nature's scope: she already claims Bertram by divine sanction of her feeling. No matter whether he knows it or not, she knows he is that other part of her which her clear soul misses; and Fate shall not be pardoned if it leaves her less whole and rounded than she ought to be. Hitherto she is but half a person, and that half is disabled at the discovery. Love fills her with this rebuke of incompleteness, till she cannot tolerate thus being half-born into the world. When love takes hold of such determined minds, who are capable of willing and well endowed to confirm the will in action, the feminine traits acquire a bravery which inspires an invention not inconsistent with womanhood. She must find some way to reach the court, and put love's halo round his person: perhaps it will be absorbed and mingle with his blood. When the heart pronounces strongly, its meaning is sure to gather on the countenance and lend to conduct the purple of victory. So Helena will not have a secret, to prey like a worm upon the damask buds of all her youth. "Fortune," she said, "was no goddess, that had put such difference betwixt their two estates; love, no god, that would not extend his might only where qualities were level." She will not risk leaving the business to Heaven, and sit half made up till Providence may by chance observe her plight. "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie Which we ascribe to Heaven: the fated sky Gives us free scope; only, doth backward pull Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull. Impossible be strange attempts to those That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose What hath been cannot be." Still, with all this venturesome disposition to help the piecing-out of destiny, she is a true woman, who must relapse from the boldest project into the secret humility of loving, and of looking up to the orb around which the heart revolves. And how honest she is! for she had a father whose "skill was almost as great as his honesty." So she acknowledges her passion to Bertram's mother, as if to let us see that her action is not a plot, and her motive nothing short of womanly. "I follow him not By any token of presumptuous suit; Nor would I have him, till I do deserve him; Yet never know how that desert should be. ... Thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore The sun, that looks upon his worshipper, But knows of him no more." In this admirable scene, the Countess does not repel, but rather seems to undertake the part of Nature's good-will for any love that is real enough and full enough for two.