o my
laboratory immediately after the lecture, and complained of being
puzzled by the discrepancy between my statements and those in the text
books. He showed me his note-book, in which I was reported as having
in one portion of the lecture championed the most outrageous and
unscientific heresies. Of course I denied it, and declared that he had
misunderstood me, but on comparing his notes with those of his
companions, it became clear that he was right, and that I really had
made some most preposterous statements. Of course I shall explain it
away as being the result of a moment of aberration, but I feel only too
sure that it will be the first of a series. It is but a month now to
the end of the session, and I pray that I may be able to hold out until
then.

April 26. Ten days have elapsed since I have had the heart to make any
entry in my journal. Why should I record my own humiliation and
degradation? I had vowed never to open it again. And yet the force of
habit is strong, and here I find myself taking up once more the record
of my own dreadful experiences--in much the same spirit in which a
suicide has been known to take notes of the effects of the poison which
killed him.

Well, the crash which I had foreseen has come--and that no further back
than yesterday. The university authorities have taken my lectureship
from me. It has been done in the most delicate way, purporting to be a
temporary measure to relieve me from the effects of overwork, and to
give me the opportunity of recovering my health. None the less, it has
been done, and I am no longer Professor Gilroy. The laboratory is
still in my charge, but I have little doubt that that also will soon go.

The fact is that my lectures had become the laughing-stock of the
university. My class was crowded with students who came to see and
hear what the eccentric professor would do or say next. I cannot go
into the detail of my humiliation. Oh, that devilish woman! There is
no depth of buffoonery and imbecility to which she has not forced me.
I would begin my lecture clearly and well, but always with the sense of
a coming eclipse. Then as I felt the influence I would struggle
against it, striving with clenched hands and beads of sweat upon my
brow to get the better of it, while the students, hearing my incoherent
words and watching my contortions, would roar with laughter at the
antics of their professor. And then, when she had once fairly mastered