The contact with so many minds, the widening circle of acquaintance with workers of different views and methods, and especially the appeal for aid in religious perplexity constantly made by those who came under her influence, doubtless helped to precipitate that sorrow, which, though in its acutest phase of short duration, was the sharpest trial Miss Beale was ever called upon to experience; one on which she never ceased to look back with horror. She who had said that she ‘could truly take to herself the words of Faber,’[49] who had been from earliest childhood conscious of a protecting Presence, and had even then ‘found prayer a joy,’ now in late middle life felt herself, as it were, cast out. At an age when the inexperienced questionings of youth were over, when she hoped to find faith and hope strengthened by knowledge, it seemed for a moment as if they had died down altogether. ‘Nel mezzo cammin di nostra vita Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura Che la diritta via era smarrita.’ To write of it is to turn a page of soul-history so intimate, and for a moment so painful, that it may well be thought it should be passed over in silence. But to omit it would not be wholly faithful to the memory of one who wished certainly that this story of her inner life should be known to all who could be helped by it. To tell it, moreover, is to use her own words, for she wrote of it herself, more than once or twice. She felt, when she looked back on it afterwards, that she was obliged to go through this time of suffering in order that she might be better fitted to do the work given her, in order that others who had lost faith and hope might be helped to regain them, by knowing how she herself had passed from destruction and despair to hope and rebuilding. The diary of this whole period is more than ever indicative of inward strife and unrest from which she would not by her own will escape to any comfort other than the highest. Among the entries, which are for the most part self-analytical and depressed, it is curious to find this: ‘Letter from —— Some vanity perhaps in the refusal.’ It was an offer of marriage from an old friend. Once or twice there is a hint of coming sorrow before she was conscious what its nature would be. Once, when marking the anniversary of a friend’s death, she noted herself as ‘perplexed with the Incomprehensible.’ On June 27, 1881, a year before the darkness closed in, she wrote: ‘A great dread of coming sorrow, as of a calvary before me. If some bitter cup is to be poured out, Thy will be done. Only forsake me not! _Salvator Mundi!_’ The new year (of 1882) opened as usual with renewed self-dedication; but she mentions that she came back to Cheltenham on January 14, after the annual Retreat, ‘very broken.’ Though a persistent effort to keep up her religious rule was maintained, the clear shining of faith was much clouded. One who went to her for help at that time writes of it thus:—