to him of whom Jesus himself had spoken as of
"my God and your God".

Simply enough was the difficulty arranged for the moment. It was agreed
that I should withdraw myself from the "Holy Communion"--for in that
service, full of the recognition of Jesus as Deity, I could not join
without hypocrisy. The ordinary services I would attend, merely remaining
silent during those portions of them in which I could not honestly take
part, and while I knew that these changes in a clergyman's wife could not
pass unnoticed in a country village, I yet felt that nothing less than
this was consistent with barest duty. While I had merely doubted, I had
kept silence, and no act of mine had suggested doubt to others. Now that
I had no doubt that Christianity was a delusion, I would no longer act as
though I believed that to be of God which heart and intellect rejected as
untrue.

For awhile all went smoothly. I daresay the parishioners gossipped about
the absence of their vicar's wife from the Sacrament, and indeed I
remember the pain and trembling wherewith, on the first "Sacrament
Sunday" after my return, I rose from my seat and walked quietly from the
church, leaving the white-spread altar. That the vicar's wife should
"communicate" was as much a matter of course as that the vicar should
"administer"; I had never in my life taken public part in anything that
made me noticeable in any way among strangers, and still I can recall the
feeling of deadly sickness that well nigh overcame me, as rising to go
out I felt that every eye in the church was on me, and that my exit would
be the cause of unending comment. As a matter of fact, everyone thought
that I was taken suddenly ill, and many were the calls and enquiries on
the following day. To any direct question, I answered quietly that I was
unable to take part in the profession of faith required from an honest
communicant, but the statement was rarely necessary, for the idea of
heresy in a vicar's wife did not readily suggest itself to the ordinary
bucolic mind, and I did not proffer information when it was unasked for.

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