scribes these and a score of popularly "esteemed"
public men is applied also to their womenkind; Isabel is not spared;
nor is Margaret, Remington's wife.

Here, then, we have what is at the same time Remington's Apologia for
his errors, and his revenge upon the society which decided to
discredit him. He presents himself as an "unarmed, discredited man,"
whose power with the pen cannot be checked; a man "half out of life
already" because of the "red blaze that came out of my unguarded
nature, and closed my career for me;" a man who "cries out of his
heart to the unseen fellowship about him," and to those who "have
heard already some crude inaccurate version of our story and why I did
not take office, and have formed your partial judgment on me."
Remington's reply to the man who urges him to hush up the scandal
gives a colour of personal disinterestedness to the story.

"It's our duty to smash now openly in the sight of everyone.
I've got that as clear and plain--as prison whitewash. I am
convinced that we have got to be public to the uttermost now--I
mean it--until every corner of our world knows this story, knows
it fully, adds it to the Parnell story and the Ashton Dean story
and the Carmel story and the Witterslea story, and all the other
stories that have kicked man after man out of English public
life, the men with active imaginations, the men of strong
initiative. To think this tottering, old-woman-ridden Empire
should dare to waste a man on such a score!"

But Mr. Wells intends something more than to explain the state of mind
which led a distinguished politician and moralist, a married,
middle-aged man, to victimise--that is the "worldly" way of looking at
it--a beautiful young girl who had fallen in love with his genius.
Here we have the life-story and character of Remington portrayed at
full length--Remington an individual product of our social
environment--Remington in relation to the vast national processes
which have been changing England from the "muddle" of the Victorians
to the muddle of to-day--a Remington clever enough to see our
representative institutions stripped of their hollowness and their
cant; quick to pierce through the shell of Liberalism, not perhaps
quite to the kernel of it, but to the insincere part of it; quick to
see a profound psychological meaning in the Suffragette movement, and
to distinguish between the outer bearing of public men and the
i