a practical form of Eugenics got into
English politics.

Plutus, our agent, was scared out of his wits when the thing began.

"They're ascribing all sorts of queer ideas to you about the Family," he
said.

"I think the Family exists for the good of the children," I said; "is
that queer?"

"Not when you explain it--but they won't let you explain it. And about
marriage--?"

"I'm all right about marriage--trust me."

"Of course, if YOU had children," said Plutus, rather
inconsiderately....

They opened fire upon me in a little electioneering rag call
the HANDITCH SENTINEL, with a string of garbled quotations and
misrepresentations that gave me an admirable text for a speech. I spoke
for an hour and ten minutes with a more and more crumpled copy of the
SENTINEL in my hand, and I made the fullest and completest exposition
of the idea of endowing motherhood that I think had ever been made up
to that time in England. Its effect on the press was extraordinary. The
Liberal papers gave me quite unprecedented space under the impression
that I had only to be given rope to hang myself; the Conservatives cut
me down or tried to justify me; the whole country was talking. I had had
a pamphlet in type upon the subject, and I revised this carefully and
put it on the book-stalls within three days. It sold enormously and
brought me bushels of letters. We issued over three thousand in Handitch
alone. At meeting after meeting I was heckled upon nothing else. Long
before polling day Plutus was converted.

"It's catching on like old age pensions," he said. "We've dished the
Liberals! To think that such a project should come from our side!"

But it was only with the declaration of the poll that my battle was won.
No one expected more than a snatch victory, and I was in by over fifteen
hundred. At one bound Cossington's papers passed from apologetics varied
by repudiation to triumphant praise. "A renascent England, breeding
men," said the leader in his chief daily on the morning after the
polling, and claimed that the Conservatives had been ever the pioneers
in sanely bold constructive projects.

I came up to London with a weary but rejoicing Margaret by the night
train.

CHAPTER THE SECOND ~~ THE IMPOSSIBLE POSITION

1

To any one who did not know of that glowing secret between Isabel and
myself, I might well have appeared at that time the most successful and
enviable of men. I had recovered rapidly from an uncongeni