‘I went to her in sore trouble at the beginning of 1882, in one of the overwhelming griefs of extreme youth, when the whole aspect of life has suddenly changed from a lovely rose-garden ... to a hideous waste. The very things which made it lovely seemed to be shining and horrible shams, with undreamed-of treachery and horror lurking behind everything. It was the culminating disillusionment to turn to her who had been such a tower of patient strength all through school-life, and find _nothing_, no help, no comfort, no explanation, no hope to give! Yet while there were many at that time whom I could not endure to see, or do with because of the feeling of betrayal all round, there was never that with her. It never dawned on my _mind_ for a moment that she was herself in the horrible mire, but I understood, I suppose, in my heart. I felt sorry for her and loved her better than ever before, and I never understood till now the reason of the tender intimacy of that time, which lay under the apparent disappointment of finding no help or comfort where I had made sure of it.’ This powerlessness to help those who turned to her in their spiritual need made more poignant the sense of loss to one who loved to give freely as a mother to her children. ‘Then others came,’ she wrote afterwards of this time, ‘and one felt like the starving mother who saw the babe at her empty breast. I had no simple truths, no milk of the word to give them that they might grow thereby.’ A letter to a friend mentions books which had a destructive effect as read at this time. It was not Miss Beale’s habit deliberately to read a book which was likely to disturb or weaken faith. To an old pupil who once wrote to her of Strauss’s book, _The Old Faith and the New_, she had replied:— ‘_September 1873._