and an atmosphere of infinite tact invaded us both. Other friends

ceased to invade either of us. It was manifest we had become-we

knew not how-a private scandal, a subject for duologues, an

amazement, a perplexity, a vivid interest. In a few brief weeks it

seemed London passed fromabsolute unsuspiciousness to a chattering

exaggeration of itsknowledge of ourrelations.

It was just the most inappropriate time for that disclosure. The

long smouldering antagonism to my endowment of motherhood ideas had

flared up into an active campaign in the EXPURGATOR, and it would be

altogether disastrous to us if I should be convicted of any personal

irregularity. It was just because of the manifest and challenging

respectability of my position that I had been able to carry the

thing as far as I had done. Now suddenly my fortunes had sprung a

leak, and scandal was pouring in… It chanced, too, that a

wave of moral intolerance was sweeping through London, one of those

waves in which thebitterness of theconsciously just finds an ally

in the panic of the undiscovered. A certain Father Blodgett had

been preaching against social corruption with extraordinary force,

and had roused the Church of England people to a kind of competition

in denunciation. The old methods of the Anti-Socialist campaign had

been renewed, and had offered far too wide a scope and too tempting

an opportunity for private animosity, to be restricted to the

private affairs of the Socialists. I had intimations of an

extensive circulation of "private and confidential" letters…

Ithink there can be nothing else in life quite like the unnerving

realisation that rumour and scandal are afoot about one. Abruptly

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