With deepening color she continued: "So it was he who lifted me up that night. Well, I am glad it was one who pitied me, and not some coarse, unfeeling man. It seems strange how circumstances have brought him who shuns and is shunned by all, into such a queer relationship to me. But heaven forbid that I should give him lessons as to the selfish, matter-of-fact world. He will outgrow his morbidness and romantic chivalry with the certainty of years, and seeing more of me will banish his absurd delusions in regard to me. I need his friendship and help—indeed it seems as if they were sent to me. It can do him no harm, and it may give me a chance to do him good. If any man ever needed a sensible friend, he does."
Therefore Edith wrote him—
"It is very kind of you to offer friendship and help to one situated like myself, and I gratefully grant what you rather oddly call 'a favor.' At the same time, if you ever find such friendliness a pain or trouble to you in any way, I shall in no degree blame you for withdrawing it."
The "friendship" and "friendliness" were underscored, thus delicately hinting that this must be the only relation.
"There," she said, "all his chains will now be of his own forging, and
I shall soon demolish the paragon he is dreaming over."
She laid both letters aside, and took down her Bible with a little sigh of satisfaction.
"His lonely, empty heart," she murmured; "ah, that is the trouble with all. He thinks to fill his with a vain dream of me, as others do with as vain a dream of something else. I trust I have learned of One here who can fill and satisfy mine;" and soon she was again deep in the wondrous story, so old, so new, so all-absorbing to those from whose spiritual eyes the scales of doubt and indifference have fallen. As she read she saw, not truths about Jesus, but Him, and at His feet her heart bowed in stronger faith and deeper love every moment.
She had not even thought whether she was a Christian or not. She had not even once put her finger on her spiritual pulse, to gauge the evidences of her faith. A system of theology would have been unintelligible to her. She could not have defined one doctrine so as to have satisfied a sound divine. She had not even read the greater part of the Bible, but, in her bitter extremity, the Spirit of God, employing the inspired guide, had brought her to Jesus, as the troubled and sinful were brought to Him of old. He had given her rest. He had helped her save her sister, and with childlike confidence she was just looking, lovingly and trustingly, into His divine face, and He was smiling away all her fear and pain. She seemed to feel sure that her mother would get well, that Laura would grow stronger, that they would all learn to know Him, and would be taken care of.
As she read this evening she came to that passage of exquisite pathos, where the purest, holiest manhood said to "a woman of the city, which was a sinner."
"Thy sins are forgiven. Go in peace."