My pen was busy, and a second pamphlet, dealing with the Johannine gospel, was written and sent up to Mr. Scott under the same conditions of anonymity as before, for it was seen that my authorship could in nowise be suspected, and Mr. Scott paid me for my work.  I had also made a collection of Theistic, but non-Christian, hymns, with a view of meeting a want felt by Mr. Voysey’s congregation at St. George’s Hall, and this was lying idle, while it might be utilised.  So it was suggested that I should take up again my correspondence with Mr. and Mrs. Voysey, and glad enough was I to do so.  During this time my health was rapidly failing, and in the summer of 1873 it broke down completely.  At last I went up to London to consult a physician, and was told I was suffering from general nervous exhaustion, which, was accompanied by much disturbance of the functions of the heart.  “There is no organic disease yet,” said Dr. Sibson, “but there soon will be, unless you can completely change your manner of life.”  Such a change was not possible, and I grew rapidly worse.  The same bad adviser who had before raised the difficulty of “what will Society say?” again interfered, and urged that pressure should be put on me to compel me at least to conform to the outward ceremonies of the Church, and to attend the Holy Communion.  This I was resolved not to do, whatever might be the result of my “obstinacy “, and the result was not long in coming.

I had been with the children to Southsea, to see if the change would restore my shattered health, and stayed in town with my mother on my return under Dr. Sibson’s care.  Very skilful and very good to me was Dr. Sibson, giving me for almost nothing all the wealthiest could have bought with their gold, but he could not remove all then in my life which made the re-acquiring of health impossible.  What the doctor could not do, however, others did.  It was resolved that I should either resume attendance at the Communion, or should not return home; hypocrisy or expulsion—­such was the alternative; I chose the latter.

A bitterly sad time followed; my dear mother was heartbroken; to her, with her wide and vague form of Christianity, loosely held, the intensity of my feeling that where I did not believe I would not pretend belief, was incomprehensible.  She recognised far more fully than I all that a separation from my home meant for me, and the difficulties which would surround a young woman not yet six-and-twenty, living alone.  She knew how brutally the world judges, and how the mere fact that a woman is young and alone justifies any coarseness of slander.  Then, I did not guess how cruel men and women could be, but knowing it from eleven years’ experience, I deliberately say that I would rather go through it all again with my eyes wide open from the first, than have passed those eleven years “in Society” under the burden of an acted lie.

But the struggle was hard when she prayed me for her sake to give way; against harshness I had been rigid as steel, but to remain steadfast when my darling mother, whom I loved as I loved nothing else on earth, begged me on her knees to yield, was indeed hard.  I felt as though it must be a crime to refuse submission when she urged it, but still—­to live a lie?  Not even for her was that possible.