Finally Dr. Stone invited her to come to her for a week’s visit, hardly daring to hope that she would do so; for she had never, since entering “Purity Hall” as a baby, spent a night outside of it.  But she consented, and gladly drank in all that Dr. Stone and the doctor’s mother told her of the truth which she had so long sought.  One day soon after she had gone home, when Dr. Stone was calling on her and her mother, the mother drew Dr. Stone aside and said, “Since my daughter came back from your house she hasn’t been upstairs to see the idols once.”  After years of ceaseless devotion to them, Yu Kuliang had forsaken her idols, and was turning toward the living God.  Soon afterward, when it was necessary for Dr. Stone to go to America for an operation, and for Miss Hughes, who was in charge of the Bible Woman’s Training School, to accompany her, Yu Kuliang came and asked that she might enter the school when Miss Hughes returned from America.  But when Dr. Stone and Miss Hughes returned to China, they found Yu Kuliang suffering from tuberculosis.  The long years of self-inflicted imprisonment had left her with no vitality to resist, and the disease was making rapid progress.

Soon after the doctor’s return, Yu Kuliang’s mother went away for a visit of some days.  One afternoon during her absence, when Dr. Stone and Miss Hughes were calling on Yu Kuliang, she told them that she was studying the Bible, and trying to pray, and added:  “I never go near the idols any more.  They are all upstairs in my old cell.”  Dr. Stone at once said:  “If you no longer believe in the idols, get rid of them.  Give them to us.”  Yu Kuliang assented immediately, saying, “Take them if you want to,” and went upstairs with Dr. Stone to get them.  They brought down a Buddha and a goddess of mercy, which, after a few moments of further talk and prayer, Dr. Stone and Miss Hughes took away with them, Yu Kuliang watching them without a murmur.

The next day Dr. Stone and her mother went to see Yu Kuliang again, and with her consent and approval chopped to pieces a huge wooden idol, which was too large to carry away.  When they were wondering what they should do with the stump of the body, Yu Kuliang exclaimed, “Throw the horrid thing into the ditch!” Thus passed out of her life the idols to which she had prayed for hours at a time, before which she had burned numberless sticks of incense, beside which she had lived and slept, and which she had made her most constant companions all the years of her life.  The old temple bell, which had for years been used to call the gods from sleep, was given to Dr. Stone on the same day.

But when Yu Kuliang’s mother returned she was furiously angry—­not at the daughter to whom she was devoted, but at those who had turned her away from her idols.  Dr. Stone took the old woman’s hands in hers and pleaded with her:  “You know your daughter does not believe in idols, you know the misery of her life, you know how she longs for peace; and as long as you harbour the idols in your home, Jesus cannot come into her heart and dwell there.”  The old woman at once broke out, in the tones of one taking the part of an injured friend, “But if your God is such a mighty one, and has the tens of thousands of followers you tell us He has, why should He be jealous of our poor little idols and those who worship them?”