ny or do
anything she likes. _You'll_ be shut of the responsibility."

CHAPTER XXVIII

From that time forward it was as if Alfred had vanished into space.
Whether he ever attempted to communicate with her, Beth could not
tell; but she received no letter or message. She expected to hear from
him through Dicksie, but it soon became apparent that Dicksie had
deserted her. He came to none of their old haunts, and never looked
her way in church or in the street when they met. She was ashamed to
believe it of him at first, lest some defect in her own nature should
have given rise to the horrid suspicion; but when she could no longer
doubt it, she shrugged her shoulders as at something contemptible, and
dismissed him from her mind. About Alfred she could not be sure. He
might have sent letters and messages that never reached her, and
therefore she would not blame him; but as the thought of him became an
ache, she resolutely set it aside, so that, in a very short time, in
that part of her consciousness where his image had been, there was a
blank. Thus the whole incident ended like a light extinguished, as
Beth acknowledged to herself at last. "It is curious, though," she
thought, "but I certainly knew it in myself all along from the moment
the change came, _if only I could have got at the knowledge_."

As a direct result of her separation from Alfred, Beth entered upon a
bad phase. The simple satisfaction of her heart in his company had
kept her sane and healthy. With such a will as hers, it had not been
hard to cast him out of her anticipations; but with him, there went
from her life that wholesome companionship of boy and girl which
contains all the happiness necessary for their immaturity, and also
stimulates their growth in every way by holding out the alluring
prospect of the fulfilment of those hopes of their being towards which
their youth should aspire from the first, insensibly, but without
pause. Having once known this companionship, Beth did not thrive
without it. She had no other interest in its place to take her out of
herself, and the time hung heavy on her hands. With her temperament,
however, more than a momentary pause was impossible. Her active mind,
being bare of all expectation, soon began to sate itself upon vain
imaginings. For the rational plans and pursuits she had been
accustomed to make and to carry out with the boys, she had nothing to
substitute but dreams; and on these she lived, finding