‘August 27, 1882.
‘Dear Mrs. Russell Gurney,—I have had such a happy Sunday,—I can hardly believe it is the same earth that seemed to me so dead the week before, when I could not go to Church, but wandered about quite desolate.
‘Three weeks ago, if any one had spoken, as I am doing now, I should have thought it superstitious, and I don’t think it will be well either for myself or others to speak much of it now, only to one who, like you, understands—and who helped to take off the “grave-clothes.”
‘I want to use my limbs first, to get back to my old work now, and see if there is really a new life; I want to see if I can help some for whom I could do nothing before.
‘I am with delightful people. Mr. Webb is just a living picture of Chaucer’s Good Parson and well known in the scientific world: his special field is astronomy. He showed us a wonderful gas-nebula on Saturday night. He quite believes in spiritual manifestations, and seems to think with Professor Barrett about the ether.
‘I have to thank you much, dear Mrs. Gurney, for your sympathy. It was such a help to me to be able to speak to you. I meant to say nothing to any one, but I could not help it. The story of your own vision helped me, as it was something like my own: it is so much what Browning describes at the end of “Saul,” when David has realised the Divine love, and feels the living pulse beating in all nature. Everybody helped me in some way, but especially Mr. Corbet’s teaching, which seems wonderfully beautiful.
‘I dare say it was the same last year; but different to me, because I was comparatively satisfied then, not poor and needy (as I came this time), and therefore ready to understand.
‘“I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice”: my text for to-day.’
She felt like one set free from prison, but the newly recovered liberty was used with caution. ‘You will like to know,’ she wrote to a friend in the following year, ‘that the fitful gleams of sunlight, which used to come after the dark night, have become now something like a steady shining. I was able to get a few quiet days at Christmas, and then first I began to feel that I should be able to give thanks for this terrible experience, and the thankfulness has grown ever since.’
As she said, the thankfulness grew. But in the very heart of the fire she had felt no regret, known no complaining. She was willing to suffer, if by that means she might help the more. On August 15, just a week after the day she always remembered as ‘Tuesday the 8th,’ she wrote of one whose calling in life was to teach others: ‘You say he has been reading sceptical books; I want him to go on doing so. He must know how deep the questions go, or he will be fighting windmills, as I have done.’