Wilfred is just the man to protect you and to keep the world at a distance, where it could not affect your life by its comments.  He regards your birth in the same light that I do, and would rather transmit your lovely qualities of soul and mind to his descendants than the traits of many proudly born girls who are ready to take him at the first asking:  for you must know how popular he is with our sex.

I can not believe you are insensible to his magnetic and lovable qualities, but, as you say, you have been so saddened by the sudden knowledge of your history that it has blunted your emotions in other directions.  I can only hope this will wear away and that you will reconsider your resolve and consent to make Wilfred the happy and proud man you could, by becoming his wife.

Never forget that God created love and man created marriage.

And to be born of a loveless union is a darker blight than to be born in love without union.

But what I want to talk about now, is your determination to live a single life and to devote yourself to reclaiming weak and erring women.  You are young to enter this field of work, yet at twenty-four you are older than many women of thirty-five, because you have had the prematurely ripening rain of sorrow on your life.  I know you will go into the work you mention with the sympathy and understanding which alone can make any reformatory work successful.  Yet you are going to encounter experiences which will shock and pain you, in ways you do not imagine now.

You are starting out with the idea of most sympathetic good women, that all erring souls of their own sex fall through betrayed trust, and broken promises, and misplaced love.  Such cases you will encounter, and they will most readily respond to your efforts for their reformation.  But many of those you seek to aid will have gone on the road to folly through mercenary motives, and this will prove a vast obstacle.

When a woman sells to Mammon, under any stress of circumstance, that which belongs to Cupid, there is something left out of her nature and character which renders the efforts of the reformers almost useless.  You know all real, lasting reform must come from within.  The woman who has once decided that fine apparel, and comfort, and leisure, are of more value to her than her virtue usually reaches old age or disease before the reformer can even gain her attention.  You will find many such among your protegees, and you may as well leave them to work out their own reformation, and turn your energies to those who long for a better life.

It is that longing which means real reformation.  To paraphrase an old couplet—­

  The soul reformed against its will
  Clings to the same old vices still.

I do not believe in a forced morality, save as a protection to a community.  I believe in it as a legal fence, but it possesses no value as a religious motive.  It helps to save society some annoyance, but it does not materially improve the condition of humanity.  Such improvements must come from the desire of men and women to reach higher standards.  So, after you have planted a little seed in the mind of the mercenary Magdalene which may in time sprout and grow, pass on, and find those who have gone wrong from other causes, and who are longing for a hand to lead them right.