"Well, there is no master key to it," said Lily. "Separately and simply you have to take each thing, and do it or avoid it. You will need endless patience. I don't want to preach to you, and I don't know how; but you have asked me to help you. Your life has been passed in a certain way: you have told me certain things about it. On the whole, you wish the future to be different. Forget the past, then—try to forget it. Do not dwell on it: it is a bad companion. It will only paralyze you, and you need all your power for what lies in front of you."
"Do you mean I must renounce the world, and all that?" asked Kit.
"No, nor go into a nunnery. You have a duty towards Jack. Do it; above all, keep on doing it, every day and always. Consider whether there are not many things, harmless in themselves, which lead to things not harmless. Avoid them."
"Don't flirt, you mean?" said Kit quite sincerely.
Lily paused a moment. There was a certain coarse simplicity about Kit which was at once embarrassing and helpful. Never were appearances more misleading; for Kit, with her pallor and exquisite face, looked the very image of a refined woman of the world, one who lived aloof from the grossness of life, yet of fine and complicated fibre. Instead, as far as present purposes were concerned, she was as ignorant as a child, but without innocence. She had lost the latter without remedying the former.
"Certainly don't flirt," she said; "but don't do a great deal more than that. Remember that you are a certain power in the world—many people take their tone from such as you—and let that power be on the right side. One knows dimly enough what goodness is, but one knows it sufficiently. I don't want you to be a raving reformer: that is not in your line. Set your face steadily against a great many things which are commonly done by the people among whom you move."
"The things I have done all my life," said Kit.
"Yes, the things you have done all your life."
Kit sat silent, and the gentleness of her face to this straight speech was touching. At last she looked up.