She sat motionless for a while after he left the room. She felt thrilled
and numbed. There are moments in life when souls stand forth from their
clayey frames and touch each other, forgetful of time and space. It was
one of those experiences that Beth had just passed through. She went to
her room and crouched down at her window beneath the stars of that
autumn night. Poor Arthur! She was so sad over it all. And he had loved
her! How strange! How could it have been? Loved her since they were
children, he had said. She had never thought of love coming like that.
And they had played together upon that meadow out there. They had grown
up together, and he had even lived in her home those few years before he
went to college. No, she had never dreamed of marrying Arthur! But oh,
he was wounded so! She had never seen him look like that before. And he
had hoped that she would share his life and his labor. She thought how
he had pictured her far away under the burning sun of Palestine, bathing
his heated brow and cheering him for fresh effort. He had pictured,
perhaps, a little humble home, quiet and peaceful, somewhere amid the
snow-crested mountains of the East, where he would walk with her in the
cool of night-fall, under the bright stars and clear sky of that distant
land. Poor, mistaken Arthur! She was not fitted for such a life, she
thought. They were never made for each other. Their ambitions were not
the same. She had found her counterpart in Clarence, and he understood
her as Arthur never could have done. Arthur was a grand, good, practical
man, but there was nothing of the artist-soul in him, she thought. But
she had hoped that he would always be her own and Clarence's friend. He
was such a noble friend! And now her hope was crushed. She could never
be the same to him again, she knew, and he had said farewell.

"Good-bye, Beth--little Beth," he had said, and she lingered over the
last two words, "little Beth." Yes, she would be "little Beth" to him,