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 su