My own careful study of criminology and the assiduous searchings of Albert Adams in the same direction; my mother's anecdotes of the lives of statesmen, police-magistrates, prosecuting counsel, judges, press-editors--many of whom have enjoyed her hospitality abroad--have given me numerous hints in what direction to pursue my researches. Consequently the office of Mr. Michaelis will be the Criminal Investigation Department of the W.S.P.U. I feel instinctively I am touching pitch and that you will disapprove ... but if we are to fight with clean hands, _que Messieurs les Assassins commencent_! If Scotland Yards drops slander and infamous suggestions as a weapon we will let our poisoned arrows rust in the armoury. How _beastly_ all this is! _Why_ do they drive us to these extremes? I know already enough to blast the characters of several among our public men. Yet I know in so doing I should wreck the life-happiness of faithful wives, believing sisters or daughters, or bright-faced children. Perhaps I won't, when it comes to the pinch. But somehow, I think, if they guess I have this knowledge in my possession, they will leave David Williams and Kate Warren alone. Sometimes, d'you know, I wake up in the middle of the night at the Lilacs or in my reconstituted bedroom at 88-90, and wish I were quit of all this Suffrage business, all this vain struggle against predominant man--and away with you on a Pacific Island. Then I realize that we should have large cockroaches and innumerable sand fleas in our new home, that we should have broken Linda's heart, have set back the Suffrage cause as much as Parnell's adultery postponed Home Rule; and above all that I am already thirty-five and shall soon be thirty-six and that it wouldn't be very long before you in comfort-loving middle age sighed for the well-ordered life of No. 1, Park Crescent, Portland Place! On the whole, I think the most rational line I can take is to continue resolutely this struggle for the Vote. With the Vote must come the opening of Parliament to women. I'm not too old to aspire to be some day Secretary of State for Home Affairs. Because the General Post Office has already become interested in my correspondence, and because this is really a "pivotal" letter I am not trusting it to the post but am calling with it at No. 1 and handing it personally to your butler. I look to you to destroy it when you have read its contents--if you go to that length. Yours, VIVIE.