Nothing stopped her much in the second chapter.  The ’next obligation’ did not start up till the words of John the Baptist in the beginning of the third —­

“Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

“What is repentance? —­ and what is the kingdom of heaven?” pondered Elizabeth.  “I wish somebody was here to tell me.  Repent? —­ I know what it is to repent —­ it is to change one’s mind about something, and to will just against what one willed before. —­ And what ought I to repent about? —­ Everything wrong! Everything wrong! —­ That is, to turn about and set my face just the other way from what it has been all my life! —­ I might as good take hold of this moving earth with my two fingers and give it a twist to go westwards. —­”

Elizabeth shut up her book, and laid it on the moss beside her.

“Repent? —­ yes, it’s an obligation.  Oh what shall I do with it! —­”

She would have liked to do with it as she did with her head —­ lay it down.

“These wrong things are iron-strong in me —­ how can I unscrew them from their fastenings, and change all the out-goings and in-comings of my mind? —­ when the very hands that must do the work have a bent the wrong way.  How can I? —­ I am strong for evil —­ I am weak as a child for good.”

“I will try!” she said the next instant, lifting her head up —­ “I will try to do what I can. —­ But that is not changing my whole inner way of feeling —­ that is not repenting.  Perhaps it will come.  Or is this determination of mine to try, the beginning of it?  I do not know that it is —­ I cannot be sure that it is.  No —­ one might wish to be a good lawyer, without at all being willing to go through all the labour and pains for it which Winthrop Landholm has taken. —­ No, this is not, or it may not be, repentance —­ I cannot be sure that it is anything.  But will it not come? or how can I get it?  How alone I am from all counsel and help! —­ Still it must be my duty to try —­ to try to do particular things right, as they come up, even though I cannot feel right all at once.  And if I try, won’t the help come, and the knowledge? —­ What a confusion it is!  In the midst of it all it is my duty to repent, and I haven’t the least idea how to set about it, and I can’t do it!  O I wish Winthrop Landholm was here! —­”

Elizabeth pondered the matter a good deal; and the more she thought about it, the worse the confusion grew.  The duty seemed more imminent, the difficulty more obstinate.  She was driven at last, unwillingly again, to her former ressource —­ what she could not give herself, to ask to have given her.  She did it, with tears again, that were wrung from breaking pride and weary wishing.  More quietly then she resolved to lay off perplexing care, and to strive to meet the moment’s duty, as it arose.  And by this time with a very humbled and quieted brow, she went on with her chapter.  The words of the next verse caught her eye and her mind at once.