of the young Liberal group they had done so much to inspire and

organise; their dinner-table had long been a scene of hostile

depreciation of the BLUE WEEKLY and all its allies; week after week

Altiora proclaimed that I was "doing nothing," and found other

causes for our bye-election triumphs; I counted Chambers Street a

dangerous place for me. Yet, nevertheless, I was astonished to find

them using a private scandal against me. They did. I think

Handitch had filled up the measure of their bitterness, for I had

not only abandoned them, but I was succeeding beyond even their

power of misrepresentation. Always I had been a wasp in their

spider's web, difficult to claim as a tool, uncritical,

antagonistic. I admired their work and devotion enormously, but I

had never concealed my contempt for a certain childish vanity they

displayed, and for the frequent puerility of their political

intrigues. I suppose contempt galls more than injuries, and anyhow

they had me now. They had me. Bailey, I found, was warning fathers

of girls against me as a "reckless libertine," and Altiora, flushed,

roguish, and dishevelled, was sitting on her fender curb after

dinner, and pledging little parties of five or six women at a time

with infinite gusto not to let the matter go further. Our cell was

open to the world, and a bleak, distressful daylight streaming in.

I had a gleam of a more intimate motive in Altiora from the reports

that came to me. Isabel had been doing a series of five or six

articles in the POLITICAL REVIEW in support of our campaign, the

POLITICAL REVIEW which had hitherto been loyally Baileyite. Quite

her best writing up to the present, at any rate, is in those papers,

and no doubt Altiora had had not only to read her in those invaded

columns, but listen to her praises in the mouths of the tactless

influential. Altiora, like so many people who rely on gesture and

vocal insistence in conversation, writes a poor and slovenly prose

and handles an argument badly; Isabel has her University training

behind her and wrote from the first with the stark power of a clear-

headed man. "Now we know," said Altiora, with just a gleam of

malice showing through her brightness, "now we know who helps with

the writing!"

She revealed astonishing knowledge.

For a time I couldn't for the life of me discover her sources. I

had, indeed, a desperate intention of challenging her, and then I

bethought me of a youngster named Curmain, who had been my

supplemental typist and secretary for a time, and whom I had sent on

to her before the days of our breach. "Of course!" said I,

"Curmain!" He was a tall, drooping, sidelong youth with sandy hair,

a little forward head, and a long thin neck. He stole stamps, and,

I suspected, rifled my private letter drawer, and I found him one

day on a turn of the stairs looking guilty and ruffled with a pretty

Irish housemaid of Margaret's manifestly in a state of hot

indignation. I saw nothing, but I felt everything in the air

between them. I hate this pestering of servants, but at the same

time I didn't want Curmain wiped out of existence, so I had packed

him off without unnecessary discussion to Altiora. He was quick and

cheap anyhow, and I thought her general austerity ought to redeem

him if anything could; the Chambers Street housemaid wasn't for any

man's kissing and showed it, and the stamps and private letters were

looked after with an efficiency altogether surpassing mine. And

Altiora, I've no doubt left now whatever, pumped this young

undesirable about me, and scenting a story, had him to dinner alone

one evening to get to the bottom of the matter. She got quite to

the bottom of it,-it must have been a queer duologue. She read

Isabel's careless, intimate letters to me, so to speak, by this

proxy, and she wasn't ashamed to use this information in the service

of the bitterness that had sprung up in her since our political

breach. It was essentially a personal bitterness; it helped no

public purpose of theirs to get rid of me. My downfall in any

public sense was sheer waste,-the loss of a man. She knew she was

behaving badly, and so, when it came to remonstrance, she behaved

worse. She'd got names and dates and places; the efficiency of her

information was irresistible. And she set to work at it

marvellously. Never before, in all her pursuit of efficient ideals,

had Altiora achieved such levels of efficiency. I wrote a protest

that was perhaps ill-advised and angry, I went to her and tried to

stop her. She wouldn't listen, she wouldn't think, she denied and

lied, she behaved like a naughty child of six years old which has

made up its mind to be hurtful. It wasn't only, I think, that she

couldn't bear our political and social influence; she also-I

realised at that interview couldn't bear our loving. It seemed to

her the sickliest thing,-a thing quite unendurable. While such

things were, the virtue had gone out of her world.

I've the vividest memory of that call of mine. She'd just come in

and taken off her hat, and she was grey and dishevelled and tired,