sely 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 did all that a separation from my home meant for me, and the
difficulties that would surround a young woman, not yet twenty-six,
living alone. She knew how brutally the world judges, and how the mere
fact that a woman was young and alone justified any coarseness of
slander. Then I did not guess how cruel men and women could be, how
venomous their tongues; now, knowing it, having faced slander and
lived it down, I deliberately say that were the choice again before me
I would choose as I chose then; I would rather go through it all again
than live "in Society" under the burden of an acted lie.

The hardest struggle was against my mother's tears and pleading; to
cause her pain was tenfold pain to me. Against harshness I had been
rigid as steel, but it was hard to remain steadfast when my darling
mother, whom I loved as I loved nothing else on earth, threw herself
on her knees before me, imploring me to yield. It seemed like a crime
to bring such anguish on her; and I felt as a murderer as the snowy
head was pressed against my knees. And yet--to live a lie? Not even
for her was that shame possible; in that worst crisis of blinding
agony my will clung fast to Truth. And it is true now as it ever was
that he who loves father or mother better than Truth is not worthy of
her, and the flint-strewn path of honesty is the way to Light and
Peace.

Then there were the children, the two little ones who worshipped me,
who was to them mother, nurse, and playfellow. Were they, too,
demanded at my hands? Not wholly--for a time. Facts which I need not
touch on here enabled my brother to obtain for me a legal separation,
and when everything was arranged, I found myself guardian of my little
daughter, and possessor of a small monthly income sufficient for
respectable starvation. With a great price I had obtained my freedom,
but--I was free. Home, friends, social position, were the price
demanded and paid, and, being free, I wondered what to do with my
freedom. I could have had a home with my brother if I would give up my
heretical friends and keep quiet, but I had no mind to put my limbs
into fetters again, and in my youthful inexperience I determined to
find something to do. The difficulty was the "something," and I spent
various shillings in agencies, with a quite wonderful unanimity