ence or for rhythmical expression. All I wanted then
was to see the church full of upturned faces, alive with throbbing
sympathy, instead of the dreary emptiness of silent pews. And as
though in a dream the solitude was peopled, and I saw the listening
faces and the eager eyes, and as the sentences flowed unbidden from my
lips and my own tones echoed back to me from the pillars of the
ancient church, I knew of a verity that the gift of speech was mine,
and that if ever--and then it seemed so impossible!--if ever the
chance came to me of public work, this power of melodious utterance
should at least win hearing for any message I had to bring.

But the knowledge remained a secret all to my own self for many a long
month, for I quickly felt ashamed of that foolish speechifying in an
empty church; but, foolish as it was, I note it here, as it was the
first effort of that expression in spoken words which later became to
me one of the deepest delights of life. And, indeed, none can know,
save they who have felt it, what joy there is in the full rush of
language that moves and sways; to feel a crowd respond to the lightest
touch; to see the faces brighten or darken at your bidding; to know
that the sources of human emotion and human passion gush forth at the
word of the speaker as the stream from the riven rock; to feel that
the thought which thrills through a thousand hearers has its impulse
from you, and throbs back to you the fuller from a thousand
heart-beats. Is there any emotional joy in life more brilliant than
this, fuller of passionate triumph, and of the very essence of
intellectual delight?

In 1873 my marriage tie was broken. I took no new step, but my absence
from the Communion led to some gossip, and a relative of Mr. Besant
pressed on him highly-coloured views of the social and professional
dangers which would accrue if my heresy became known. My health, never
really restored since the autumn of 1871, grew worse and worse,
serious heart trouble having arisen from the constant strain under
which I lived. At last, in July or August, 1873, the crisis came. I
was told that I must conform to the outward observances of the Church,
and attend the Communion; I refused. Then came the distinct
alternative; conformity or exclusion from home--in other words,
hypocrisy or expulsion. I chose the latter.

A bitterly sad time followed. My dear mother was heart-broken. To her,
with her wide and vague form of Christianity, loo