on--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.

Then there were the children, the two little ones who worshipped me, I
who was to them mother, nurse, and playfellow. Were these also to be
resigned? For awhile, at least, this complete loss was spared me, for
facts (which I have not touched on in this record) came accidentally to
my brother's knowledge, and he resolved that I should have the protection
of legal separation, and should not be turned wholly penniless and alone
into the world. So, when everything was arranged, I found myself
possessed of my little girl, of complete personal freedom, and of a small
monthly income sufficient for respectable starvation.

X.

The "world was all before us where to choose", but circumstances narrowed
the choice down to Hobson's. I had no ready money beyond the first
month's payment of my annuity; furnished lodgings were beyond my means,
and I had nothing wherewith to buy furniture. My brother offered me a
home, on condition that I should give up my "heretical friends" and keep
quiet; but, being freed from one bondage, nothing was further from my
thoughts than to enter another. Besides, I did not choose to be a burden
on anyone, and I resolved to "get someth