living as a personal acquaintance; every event is as clear as a
personal experience. And if this be true of the story written_ a la
grace de la plume, _where both events and characters unfold themselves
like the buds of some unknown plant, how much more strongly is it the
case of the story that has so long been mused over that one day it had
to be told! Then the marking events of the actors' lives, their
adventures, whether of sorrow or of joy, their sayings and doings,
noble or bright or mistaken, recorded in the book, are but a tithe of
the adventures, sayings and doings with which the writer seems to be
familiar. He might write or talk about them, in praise or
vindictiveness as he loves or dreads them, for many a longer day--but
he has one main theme to make clear to his hearers and must respect
the modern canons of the Story-telling Art. Among the many things
therefore he could tell, an he would, he selects that only which will
unravel a particular thread of fate in the tangle of endless
consequences; which will render plausible the growth of passions on
which, in a continuous life-drama, is based one particular episode._

_Of such a kind is the story of Adrian Landale._

_The haunting thought round which the tale of the sorely
tempest-tossed dreamer is gathered is one which, I think, must at one
time or other have occurred to many a man as he neared the maturity of
middle-life:--What form of turmoil would come into his heart if, when
still in the strength of his age but after long years of hopeless
separation, he were again brought face to face with the woman who had
been the one passion of his life, the first and only love of his
youth? And what if she were still then exactly as he had last seen
her--she, untouched by years even as she had so long lived in his
thoughts: he, with his soul scarred and seamed by many encounters
bravely sustained in the Battle of Life?_

_The problem thus propounded is not solvable, even in fiction, unless
it be by "fantastic" treatment. But perhaps the more so on this
account did it haunt me. And out of the travail of my mind around it,
out of the changing shadows of restless speculation, gradually
emerged, clear and alive, the being of Adrian Landale and his two
loves._

_Here then was a man, whose mind, moulded by nature for grace and
contemplation, was cast by fate amid all the turmoils of_ Romance _and
action. Here was one of those whose warm heart and idealising
enthusias