Undoubtedly her two great supports through the time of stress—if we set aside for the moment all that was involved in her “_If Thou go not with me,—!_” were the deep interest taken by Miss Du Pre in every detail of the story; and the possession of Sadie’s poems, which had just been published. In these latter she found fitting expression for the fightings and fears of her own inner life, and for her hard-won “twilight” consolation. It is an interesting fact that these two elements should have come into her life just at this moment, for one scarcely sees how she could have “won through” without them. Sadie’s poems remained dear to her throughout life: she knew many of them by heart and repeated them almost on her deathbed; and her copy is worn even more “threadbare” than are her volumes of Robertson’s Sermons. One can imagine the feelings with which, after a keen exciting day’s work, she went home to her lonely lodgings, with no “Alice” looking out for her, to write her report to Dr. Sewall or Miss Du Pre, and to copy in her diary—as she did—the lines: “Up the way that is narrow, the path that is steep, With no guide for my footsteps, no help for my fear: Only this—that He knoweth the way that I tread, And His banner of crimson is over my head. With the loneliness awful pressed into my soul, With no voice for companion, no grasp of a hand—” Yes, one cannot help wishing that an intimate friend had been at hand. One wonders whether she was even becomingly dressed: we know she would have wished to be; but she so seldom made the most of her appearance.[48] Footnote 48: “By the way your accounts of your dress are just a shade contradictory,” writes Miss Du Pre somewhat later. “One day you tell me you look disreputable and plunge me into depths of anxiety! and the next you say you are ‘very tidy.’ Isn’t this more than average inconsistency?” In any case what happened is perfectly clear. The Professors for the most part had a deeply rooted dislike to having women students in the University: in fact, the idea of such a thing was unthinkable; but when a gifted young woman actually sat in their sanctums urging her plea, they could not bear to say No. Strictly speaking, they should have refused to see her, but did any man yet ever refuse to see a woman whose name was before the public?