the "Letters," but simply for "Sandys on Woman," acknowledging Tommy
as the authority on the subject, like Mill on Jurisprudence, or
Thomson and Tait on the Differential Calculus. Controversies raged
about it. Some thought he asked too much of man, some thought he saw
too much in women; there was a fear that young people, knowing at last
how far short they fell of what they ought to be, might shrink from
the matrimony that must expose them to each other, now that they had
Sandys to guide them, and the persons who had simply married and
risked it (and it was astounding what a number of them there proved to
be) wrote to the papers suggesting that he might yield a little in the
next edition. But Sandys remained firm.

At first they took for granted that he was a very aged gentleman; he
had, indeed, hinted at this in the text; and when the truth came out
("And just fancy, he is not even married!") the enthusiasm was
doubled. "Not engaged!" they cried. "Don't tell that to me. No
unmarried man could have written such a eulogy of marriage without
being on the brink of it." Perhaps she was dead? It ran through the
town that she was dead. Some knew which cemetery.

The very first lady Mr. Sandys ever took in to dinner mentioned this
rumour to him, not with vulgar curiosity, but delicately, with a hint
of sympathy in waiting, and it must be remembered, in fairness to
Tommy, that all artists love sympathy. This sympathy uncorked him, and
our Tommy could flow comparatively freely at last. Observe the
delicious change.

"Has that story got abroad?" he said simply. "The matter is one which,
I need not say, I have never mentioned to a soul."