Aunt Polly was quite sublime as she delivered that little exordium; and to the girl, anxious as she was for her old strength and happiness, the words were like music.  They made her blood flow again, and there was a light in her eyes.

“Oh, Auntie,” she said, “I’ll try to.”

“Try!” echoed the other, “what comes of all your trying?  You have been reveling for a week in visions of what is to be yours; and that ought surely to have been enough time for you to make up your mind; and yet every time that I find you alone, all your resolution is gone; you simply have no strength, Helen!”

“Oh, I will have it!” cried the girl; “I don’t mean to do this way any more; I never saw it so plainly.”

“You see it now, because I’m talking to you, and you always do see it then.  But I should think the very terror of what you have suffered would serve as a motive, and make you quite desperate.  Can you not see that your very safety depends upon your taking this resolution and keeping it, and not letting go of it, no matter what happens?  From what I’ve seen of you, Helen, I know that if you do not summon all your energies together, and fling aside every purpose but this, and act upon it now, while you feel it so keenly, you will surely fail.  For anybody can withstand a temptation for a while, when his mind is made up; all the trouble is in keeping it made up for a long time.  I tell you if I found I was losing, sooner than surrender I would do anything, absolutely anything!”

Mrs. Roberts had many more words of that heroic kind; she was a vigorous little body, and she was quite on fire with enthusiasm just then, and with zeal for the consummation of the great triumph.  Perhaps there is no occupation of men quite without its poetry, and even a society leader may attain to the sublime in her devotion to life as she sees it.  Besides that the over-zealous woman was exalted to eloquence just then by a feeling that she was nearer her goal than ever before, and that she had only to spur Helen on and keep her in her present glow to clinch the matter; for the girl was very much excited indeed, and showed both by what she said and by the change in her behavior that she was determined to have an end to her own wretchedness and to conquer her shrinking from her future husband at any cost.  During all the time that she was dressing, her aunt was stirring her resolution with the same appeal, so that Helen felt that she had never seen her course so clearly before, or had so much resolution to follow it.  She spread out her arms and drank deep breaths of relief because she was free from her misery, and knew how to keep so; and at the same time, because she still felt tremblings of fear, she clenched her hands in grim earnestness.  When she was ready to descend she was flushed and trembling with excitement, and quite full of her resolution.  “She won’t have to go very far,” Mrs. Roberts mused, “for the man is madly in love with her.”