The English writer Ethel Lillian Voynich gained worldwide fame after the publication of the novel Gadfly. Voynich returns to the fate of his hero thirteen years later in the novel "Friendship Interrupted". A few decades later, the last novel from the famous Gadfly cycle, Take Off Your Shoes (1945), was published. At the center of this work is Beatrice Telford, the great—grandmother of the legendary hero, a strong, intelligent, brave woman who has gone through many trials, ready to stand up to the whole world and give her life in the name of love and her beliefs.