Nearing 70, and in what would be the last decade of his life, H.G. Wells fell in love at least three times - once with the much younger Baroness Budberg, and soon thereafter with two well-born Americans, Constance Coolidge and Martha Gelhorn, 25 and 40 years his junior respectively. These would constitute what Wells himself described as his "last flounderings towards the wife idea", and demonstrate in many ways that Wells was driven less by his...