to
the physical than to the ideal demands of love, and fickle because the
man who was present had more power to please than the one who was
merely a recollection. The actual presence was enough for them, they
had no ideals. With Beth it was different. Her present was apt to be
but a poor faded substitute for the future with the infinite range of
possibilities she had the power to perceive in it, or even for the
past as she glorified it.

While she was in this mood she was particularly provoking to those in
authority over her.

"Beth," said Miss Crow one day severely, "you are to go to Miss
Clifford directly." Beth went.

"I hear," said Miss Clifford in her severest tone, "that you have not
made your bed this morning."

"I went up to make it," Beth answered, trying dreamily to recollect
what had happened after that.

"I must give you a bad mark," Miss Clifford said, and then paused; and
Beth, who had not been attending, becoming conscious that something
had been bestowed upon her, answered politely, "Thank you."

"Beth, you are impertinent," Miss Clifford exclaimed, "and I must
punish you severely. Stay in the whole of your half-holiday and do
arithmetic."

Then Beth awoke with a start, and realising what she had done,
struggled to explain; but the moment she became herself again, an
agony of dumbness came upon her, and she left the room without a word.

She spent the long bright afternoon cowering over her arithmetic, and
crying at intervals, being in the lowest spirits, so that by
prayer-time she was pretty well exhausted. She tried to attend to the
psalms, but in the middle of them she became a poor girl suffering
from a cruel sense of injustice. All her friends misunderstood her and
were unkind to her, in consequence of which she pined away, and one
day, in the midst of a large party, she dropped down dead.

And at this point she actually did fall fainting with a thud on the
floor. Miss Clifford, who was giving out the hymn, stopped startled,
and some of the girls shrieked. Miss Crow and one of the other
teachers carried Beth out by the nearest door.

"Poor little thing!" said Miss Crow, looking pityingly at her drawn
white face and purple eyelids. "I'm afraid she's very delicate."

Miss Clifford came also, when prayers were over, and said kind things;
and from that time forward Beth received a great deal of sympathetic
attention, which did her good, but in no way reconciled her to her
imprisonment.