longer. You know his
address in Wales? Pontystrad Vicarage, Pontyffynon, Glamorgan, if
you've forgotten it. He'll be there till April, and then begin his
foreign tour and write to you at intervals from the Continent. As to
Vivie, I think she won't return to life and activity till the autumn
and _then_ she'll make things hum. She'll throw all the energy of
frustrated love into the Woman's Cause, and get 'em the Vote
somehow...!"

Early in the genesis of the book. I appointed a jury of matrons to
judge each chapter before it went to the Press, and to decide
whether it was suited to the restrictions of the circulating
library, and whether it would cause real distress or perturbation to
three persons whom we chose as representative readers of decent
fiction: Admiral Broadbent, Lady Percy Mountjoye, and old Mrs.
Bridges (Mrs. Bridges was said to have had a heart attack after
reading THE GAY-DOMBEYS--I did not wish her to have another). This
jury of broad-minded women of the world decided that Rossiter's
reply to Vivie's very long epistle should not see the light. He
himself would probably--had he known we were discussing his
affairs--have been thankful for this decision; because twelve hours
after he had written it he was heartily ashamed of his momentary
lapse from high principles, ashamed that the woman in the case
should have shown herself truer metal. He resolved, so far as our
poor human resolves are worth anything, to remain inflexibly true to
his devoted Linda and to his career in biological Science. He knew
too well that if he were caught in adultery it would be all over
with the great theories he was working to establish. The Royal
Society would condemn them. Besides, so fine a resolve as Vivie's,
to live on the heights must be respected.

At the same time, it is certain that for the next three months he
muddled his experiments, confused his arguments, lost his temper
with a colleague on the Council of the Zoological Society, kicked
the pugs--even caused the most unbearable two of them to be poisoned
by his assistant--and lied in attributing their deaths to other
causes. He promised the weeping Linda a Pom instead; he said "Hell!"
when the macaw interrupted them with raucous screams. He let pass
all sorts of misprints in his article on the Ductless Glands for the
_Encyclopaedia Scotica_, he was always losing the thread of his
discourse in his lectures at the London Institution and University
College; and he s