after the strain of such an effort as I made to save that worthless woman—­she was your cousin, which is why I fought for her so hard—­How often is not justice deflected by Love!  I might, somewhere else, when over-strained have had a fit of hysterics; and my disguise would have been penetrated by eyes less merciful than yours.  Then would have come exposure and its consequences—­damaging to You (I should not have mattered), to my poor old ‘father’ down in Wales—­whom I sincerely love—­to Praddy, to Honoria....

“Let me be thankful to get off so easily! Somme toute, I have had a glorious time, have seen the world from the man’s point of view—­and I can assure you that from his point of view it is a jolly place to live in—­He can walk up and down the Strand and receive no insult.

“Well now, to relieve your anxieties, I will tell you, that after a brief visit to South Wales to recuperate from the exertions of that trial, Mr. David Williams the famous young barrister at the Criminal Bar will go abroad to investigate the White Slave Traffic.  Miss Vivien Warren privately believes—­and hopes—­that the horrors of this traffic in British womanhood are greatly exaggerated.  The lot in life of many of these young women is so bad in their native land that they cannot make it worse by going abroad, no matter in what avowed career.  But Mr. David Williams takes rather a higher line and is resolved in any case to get at the Truth.  Miss Warren, nathless, has her misgivings anent her old mamma, and would like to know what that old lady is doing at the present time, and whether she is past reform.  Miss Warren even has her moments of doubt as to the flawless perfection of her own life:  whether the path of duty in 1897 did not rather lie in the direction of a serious attempt to be a daughter to her wayward mother and reclaim her then, instead of going off at a tangent as the mannish type of New Woman, to whom applicable Mathematics are everything and human affections very little.  I suppose the truth, the commonplace truth is, that rather late in life, Vivien Warren has fallen in love in the old-fashioned way—­How Nature mocks at us!—­and now sees things somewhat differently.  At any rate, David and Vivie, fused into one personality, are going abroad for a protracted period ... going out of your life, my dearest, for it is better so.  Linda has every right to you and Science is a jealous mistress.  Moreover poor, outcast Vivie has her own bitter pride.  She is resolved to show that a woman can cultivate strength of character and an unflinching sobriety of conduct, even when born of such doubtful stock as mine, even when devoid of all religious faith.  I know you love me, I glory in the knowledge, but I know that you likewise are more strongly bound by principles of right conduct because like myself you have no sham theology....