'Mr. Shorter,' affirmed the interviewer, 'welcomed the publication of the letters in the _Times_ "as giving the last and final word on an old and needless controversy." "Personally," he said, "I have always held the view that those letters were actuated only by the immense enthusiasm of a woman desiring comradeship and sympathy with a man of the character of Professor Heger. There was no sort of great sorrow on her part because Professor Heger was a married man, and it is plain in her letters that she merely desired comradeship with a great man. When Charlotte Brontë made her name famous with her best-known novel, she experienced much the same adulation from admirers of both sexes as she had already poured upon her teacher. She found that literary comradeship she desired in half a dozen male correspondents to whom she addressed letters in every way as interesting as those written by her to Professor Heger. There is nothing in those letters of hers, published now for the first time, that any enthusiastic woman might not write to a man double her age, who was a married man with a family, and who had been her teacher. When one considers that half a dozen writers have, in the past, declared that Charlotte Brontë was in love with Professor Heger, it is a surprising thing that Dr. Heger did not years ago publish the letters. They are a complete vindication both of her and of his father, and, as such, I welcome them, as I am sure must all lovers of the Brontës."'