tor and the whole story; but she never
knew, for Charlotte was at school in France during this period, and
never came into Beth's life again.

During the early days of her married life a sort of content settled
upon Beth; a happy sense of well-being, of rest and satisfaction, came
to her, and that strange vague yearning ache, the presence of which
made all things incomplete, was laid. The atmosphere in which she now
lived was sensuous, not spiritual, and although she was unaware of
this, she felt its influence. Dan made much of her, and she liked
that; but the vision and the dream had ceased. Her intellectual
activity was stimulated, however, and it was not long before she
began to think for herself more clearly and connectedly than she had
ever done before.

They spent the first few weeks in London in a whirl of excitement,
living at sumptuous restaurants, and going to places of amusement
every night, where Beth would sit entranced with music, singing,
dancing, and acting, never taking her eyes from the stage, and
yearning in her enthusiasm to do the same things herself--not doubting
but that she could either, so perfectly had she the power to identify
herself with the performers, and realise, as from within, what their
sensations must be.

When she had been in London as a girl at school, she had seen nothing
but the bright side of life, the wholesome, happy, young side. A poor
beggar to be helped, or a glimpse in the street of a sorrowful face
that saddened her for a moment, was the worst she knew of the great
wicked city; but now, with Dan for a companion, the realities of vice
and crime were brought home to her; she learnt to read signs of
depravity in the faces of men and women, and to associate certain
places with evil-doers as their especial haunts. Her husband's
interest in the subject was inexhaustible; he seemed to think of
little else. He would point out people in places of public amusement,
and describe in detail the loathsome lives they led. Every
well-dressed woman he saw he suspected. He would pick out one because
she had yellow hair, and another because her two little children were
precocious and pretty, and declare them to be "kept women." That a
handsome woman could be anything but vicious had apparently never
occurred to him. He was very high-minded on the subject of sin if the
sinner were a woman, and thought no degradation sufficient for her. In
speaking of such women he used epithets from which