And when he was gone, there came the weakest moments her life had yet known; a childish petulance, a tearful fretting, an irritable misery of which she was ashamed.

She went to her room to suffer in silence, and often to read through that packet of his letters, till the night was far spent.
It had cost her much to leave London.

She feared lest, during her absence, something should occur to break off the wonted course of things, and that Waymark might not resume his visits on their return.
After the feverish interval of those first weeks, she tried sometimes to distract her thoughts by reading, and got from a library a book which Waymark had recommended to her at their last meeting--Rossetti's poems.

These gave her much help in restoring her mind to quietness.
Their perfect beauty entranced her, and the rapturous purity of ideal passion, the mystic delicacies of emotion, which made every verse gleam like a star, held her for the time high above that gloomy cloudland of her being, rife with weird shapes and muffled voices.

That Beauty is solace of life, and Love the end of being,--this faith she would cling to in spite of all; she grasped it with the desperate force of one who dreaded lest it should fade and fail from her.