age
possessed her, and she knew no ease except when Dan was at hand. The
trouble always passed when she had him under observation. She could
not read, she could not write, she was too restless to sit and sew for
more than a few moments at a time. Up and down stairs she went, out of
the house and in again, fancying always, when in one place, that she
would be better in another, but finding no peace anywhere, no
brightness in the sunshine, no beauty in nature, no interest in life.
Through the long solitary hours of the long solitary days she fought
her affliction with her mouth set hard in determination to conquer it.
She met the promptings of her disordered fancy with answers from her
other self. "He and Bertha Petterick are together, that is why he is
so late," the fiend would asseverate. "Very likely," her temperate
self would reply. "But they may have been together any day this two
years, and I knew it, and pitied and despised them, but felt no pain;
why should I suffer now? Because my mind is disordered. But I shall
recover! I shall succeed!"

She would look at the clock, however, every five minutes in an agony
of suspense until Dan came in. Then she had to fight against the
impulse to question him, which beset her as strongly as the impulse to
follow him, and that was always upon her except when his presence
arrested it. Never once through it all, however, did she think of
death as a relief; it was life she looked to for help, more life and
fuller. She could interest herself in nothing, care for nothing; all
feeling of affection for any one had gone, and was replaced by
suspicion and rage. In her torment her cry was, "Oh, if some one would
only care for me! for me as I am with all my faults! If they would
only forgive me my misery and help me to care again--help _me_ also to
the luxury of loving!"

Forgive her her misery! The world will forgive anything but that; it
tramples on the wretched as the herd turns on a wounded beast, not to
put it out of its pain, but because the sight of suffering is an
offence to it. If we cannot enliven our acquaintances, they will do
little to enliven us. Sad faces are shunned; and signs of suffering
excite less sympathy than repulsion. The spirit of Christ the Consoler
has been driven out from among us.

Beth poured herself out in letters at this time rather more than was
her habit; it was an effort to get into touch with the rest of the
world again. In one to Jim, speaking of he