Among the few who knew of this sorrow was the old pupil and friend, Miss Margaret Clarke. To her Miss Beale wrote from Hyde before she had received the second medical opinion, and the reply shows, far more than the diary can tell us, how deep was the gloom which hung over her way at this time. It might well have been written three years later, when Miss Beale was called upon to undergo greater suffering than any bodily pain alone can give, and suggests to those who read it now, that the darkness of that later time was shadowing her spirit even as early as this. The interest of it is the greater because it shows another who like Dorothea Beale, while faithful to her work, unsparing in care and thought for her children, had been called upon personally to know spiritual anguish. Such suffering, such loss, such deeper realisation of Divine love as are read in this letter are surely the portion of those who, having given much and helped many, are called to some further work of sympathy, needing perhaps ‘heart’s blood.’ ‘MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,—Your letter touches me so nearly, and calls out such true sympathy, that I cannot help yielding myself to the impulse to answer you, as one who, by her own experience, knows the pain and suffering you are now passing through. Last year at this time I was in it, and possibly just where you are now, where my complete faith in all that was most dear to me was tested; yes, tested and sifted, till all human longings and cravings, even those the most lawful, were laid low; God Himself seemed to draw near, and strip the soul of all it prized, and was proud of, asking one thing after another of it, and last of all the heart, whole and unshared, until, when Good Friday came, it could sympathise with the Crucified, as it had never done before. Not that all that had not been done before as I believed, but this was in a way deeper, more searching than the soul had yet realised. I do not know if I am making myself clear to you, for it is difficult to put it into words. It was the unlearning human wisdom, and the getting ready to be “a little child,” to learn Divine Wisdom, in the school of the Kingdom of the Incarnate Word.