And now came the return to Sibsey, and with it the need for definite steps as to the Church.  For now I no longer doubted, I had rejected, and the time for silence was past.  I was willing to attend the Church services, taking no part in any not directed to God Himself, but I could no longer attend the Holy Communion, for in that service, full of recognition of Jesus as Deity and of His atoning sacrifice, I could no longer take part without hypocrisy.  This was agreed to, and well do I remember the pain and trembling wherewith on the first “Sacrament Sunday” after my return I rose and left the church.  That the vicar’s wife should “communicate” was as much a matter of course as that the vicar should “administer”; I had never done anything in public that would draw attention to me, and a feeling of deadly sickness nearly overcame me as I made my exit, conscious that every eye was on me, and that my non-participation would be the cause of unending comment.  As a matter of fact, every one naturally thought I was taken suddenly ill, and I was overwhelmed with calls and inquiries.  To any direct question I answered quietly that I was unable to take part in the profession of faith required by an honest communicant, but the statement was rarely necessary, as the idea of heresy in a vicar’s wife is slow to suggest itself to the ordinary bucolic mind, and I proffered no information where no question was asked.

It happened that, shortly after that (to me) memorable Christmas of 1872, a sharp epidemic of typhoid fever broke out in the village of Sibsey.  The drainage there was of the most primitive type, and the contagion spread rapidly.  Naturally fond of nursing, I found in this epidemic work just fitted to my hand, and I was fortunate enough to be able to lend personal help that made me welcome in the homes of the stricken poor.  The mothers who slept exhausted while I watched beside their darlings’ bedsides will never, I like to fancy, think over-harshly of the heretic whose hand was as tender and often more skilful than their own.  I think Mother Nature meant me for a nurse, for I take a sheer delight in nursing any one, provided only that there is peril in the sickness, so that there is the strange and solemn feeling of the struggle between the human skill one wields and the supreme enemy, Death.  There is a strange fascination in fighting Death, step by step, and this is of course felt to the full where one fights for life as life, and not for a life one loves.  When the patient is beloved the struggle is touched with agony, but where one fights with Death over the body of a stranger there is a weird enchantment in the contest without personal pain, and as one forces back the hated foe there is a curious triumph in the feeling which marks the death-grip yielding up its prey, as one snatches back to earth the life which had well-nigh perished.