And behind me, as I look back on the road by which I have come, all is storm and darkness. I fought my way through my lonely, sad-hearted childhood; I fought my way through my girlhood, misunderstood, and mistrusted always; and now, in my womanhood, I am fighting still. On every side of me are rebuke and suspicion, and bitter, abiding sorrow. Pain and suffering of body and of spirit have hung on my steps all the years of my life. I have had no respite. Is there never to be peace? Never to be a time of sunlight that shall make me glad of my being? Her spirit was indeed naked and without defence against the arrows of the world. Endowed with courage far greater than falls to the lot of most women, with great independence and an utter fearlessness of conventionality, she had no hesitation in avowing her own profound belief in her divine mission. To one who, meeting her for the first time, observed with ill-timed jocularity, “I understand, Mrs Kingsford, that you are a prophetess,” she retorted with the utmost solemnity, “I am indeed a prophetess,” and on her interrogator continuing his banter by inquiring: “But not, I suppose, as great as Isaiah?” “Yes,” she returned, “greater than Isaiah.” Such mockery, however boldly she faced it, caused her the most acute pain. There was, indeed, nothing undignified about her avowal of her claims, nothing that jarred, nothing of the charlatan in her composition. If she was deceived herself, at least she never dreamed of deceiving others. She never posed or attempted to gain a hearing by acting a part which was not natural to her. She was too genuine, too intense in her convictions, and withal too natural and too unaffected to be otherwise than always and everywhere true to herself. She was essentially a child of nature, and in some of the traits of her character she retained to the end the simplicity and wayward playfulness which most people say good-bye to when they reach years of discretion. Animals, of course, always appealed to her strongest sympathies, and for nine long years she could not bear to be parted except for occasional very brief periods from her favourite guinea-pig, Rufus. Nature in its varying moods made the strong appeal which it always does to people of so emotional a temperament. Once after recovering from a serious bout of illness she was taken to convalesce at Dieppe. An incident occurred here very illustrative of her susceptible nature. Having stayed for some time and being greatly benefited by the change, she was proceeding in company with Mr Edward Maitland to see her husband off by the steamer. Says her biographer: