A frightful blow has befallen us. I have been turned out of Marlton for writing my second novel. I am to leave at the end of the term. So after eight years I am thrown out of my profession: a quaint finish for the overkeen enthusiast. I quite see that I was a fool to write it. It was all owing to my unreasonable haste. I spoke out too plainly: I didn't condemn my villain enough or show the hatred I bear to vice. It is useless to explain now: all the pent-up fury of those who imagine themselves injured by me has broken out and I am overwhelmed. I was supposed to be taking part in a play that the school and town were getting up in aid of the hospital and I was requested to resign my part because no one would act in it if I persisted in going on. I have been lectured by heaps of my junior colleagues here as if I had committed a most heinous crime. I don't quite know what to make of it all. That the book is a bad one I can scarcely doubt, for the critics have been as unanimous in their condemnation of it as they were unanimous in praising my first. I must be much madder than I thought I was, because I still fail to see why my influence, which was generally allowed to be on the side of the angels, should suddenly become malign and foul because I create foul characters in a book. I could wish that some of my enemies could have seen my further work, for I have now two more novels written, which can scarcely appear for a year at least. It is all horrible. I can't bear to contemplate cutting myself off from the society of boys. Before I married they meant everything in the world to me and now they come after Elspeth and Prunella. I have passed through troublous years of late which have tainted my brain: I might have become sane again in time, but now all is darkness and I have nothing further to look forward to. Each hour of class brings me nearer to my last one and it is all I can do to keep from crying aloud. At least I will spend my remaining days in trying to keep the beacon bright in my boys' eyes. I have always regarded the schoolmaster's as the most responsible position in the kingdom: these boys sitting under me to-day will help to control the Empire to-morrow. Am I leading them to see that corruption, vice, intolerance and bigotry are deadly sins and that disinterestedness, virtue, tolerance and active sympathy are the weapons they must learn to use in their fight to build the New Jerusalem in England? I have to rouse them from their lethargy, to make them wild crusaders, caring for nothing but the future prosperity of their country. I have so little time left to do it and so much to do. The days pass with frightful rapidity. Elspeth has been up to London searching for a flat for us to live in, and after an arduous and protracted journeying she has eventually discovered a small but comfortable ground-floor apartment in Maida Vale.