the heart to dash your joy. You don't know it, but
that was the crime for which I must be exterminated, fiend that I am!"

Gusts of fury came at intervals all the morning. He wrote her
appalling letters and destroyed them. He shook his fist and snapped
his fingers at her, and went out for drink (having none in the house),
and called a hansom to take him to Mrs. Jerry's, and tore round the
park again and glared at everybody. He rushed on and on. "But the one
thing you shall never do, Grizel, is to interfere with my work; I
swear it, do you hear? In all else I am yours to mangle at your will,
but touch it, and I am a beast at bay."

And still saying such things, he drew near the publishing offices of
Goldie & Goldie, and circled round them, less like a beast at bay than
a bird that is taking a long way to its nest. And about four of the
afternoon what does this odd beast or bird or fish do but stalk into
Goldie & Goldie's and order "Unrequited Love" to be withdrawn from
circulation.

"Madam, I have carried out your wishes, and the man is hanged."

Not thus, but in words to that effect, did Tommy announce his deed to
Grizel.

"I think you have done the right thing," she wrote back, "and I admire
you for it." But he thought she did not admire him sufficiently for
it, and he did not answer her letter, so it was the last that passed
between them.

Such is the true explanation (now first published) of an affair that
at the time created no small stir. "Why withdraw the book?" Goldie &
Goldie asked of Tommy, but he would give no reason. "Why?" the public
asked of Goldie & Goldie, and they had to invent several. The public
invented the others. The silliest were those you could know only by
belonging to a club.

I swear that Tommy had not foreseen the result. Quite unwittingly the
favoured of the gods had found a way again. The talk about his
incomprehensible action was the turning-point in the fortunes of the
book. There were already a few thousand copies in circulation, and now
many thousand people wanted them. Sandys, Sandys, Sandys! where had
the ladies heard that name before? Society woke up, Sandys was again
its hero; the traveller had to go lecturing in the provinces.

The ladies! Yes, and their friends, the men. There was a Tommy society
in Mayfair that winter, nearly all of the members eminent or
beautiful, and they held each other's hands. Both sexes were eligible,
married or single, and the one rule was someth