‘I am pure,’ she said.

’My child, my own one, can I, your mother, think aught else of you?  Do I not know your heart?  Do not I know the very thoughts within you?’

’I am pure.  He has become my husband, and nothing can divide us.  I never gave a thought to another man.  I never had the faintest liking, as do other girls.  When he came and told me that he had seen me and loved me, and would take me for his wife, I felt at once that I was all his,—­his to do as he liked with me, his to nourish him, his to worship him, his to obey him, his to love him let father or mother or all the world say what they would to the contrary.  Then we were married.  Till he was my own, I never even pressed my lips upon his.  But I became his wife by a bond that nothing shall break.  You tell me of God’s law.  By God’s law I am his wife, let the people say what they will.  I have but two to think of.’

‘Yourself and him?’ asked her mother.

’I have three to think of,—­God, and him, and my child; and may God be good to me and them, as in this matter I will put myself away from myself altogether.  It is for me to obey him, and I will submit myself to none other.  If he bids me go, I will go; if he bids me stay here, I will stay.  I have become his so entirely, that no judges—­no judges can divide us.  Judges!  I know but one Judge, and He is there; and He has said that those whom He has joined together, man shall not put asunder.  Pure! pure!  No one should praise herself, but as a woman I do know that I am pure.’

Then the mother’s heart yearned greatly towards her daughter; and yet she was no whit changed.  She knew nothing of phrases of logic, but she felt that Hester had begged the whole question.  Those whom God had joined together!  True, true!  If only one could know whether in this or the other case God had joined the couple.  As Hester argued the matter, no woman should be taken from the man she had married, though he might have a dozen other wives all living.  And she spoke of purity as though it were a virtue which could be created and consecrated simply by the action of her own heart, as though nothing outside,—­no ceremony, no ordinance,—­could affect it.  The same argument would enable her to live with John Caldigate after he should come out of prison, even though, as would then be the case, another woman would have the legal right of calling herself Mrs. John Caldigate!  On the previous day she had declared that if she could not be his wife, she would be his mistress.  The mother knew what she meant,—­that, let people call her by what name they might, she would still be her husband’s wife in the eye of God.  But she would not be so.  And then she would not be pure.  And, to Mrs. Bolton, the worst of it was that this cloudiness had come upon her daughter,—­this incapacity to reason it out,—­because the love of a human being had become so strong within her bosom as to have superseded and choked the love of heavenly things.  But how should she explain all this?  ‘I am not asking you to drop his name.’