er, to whom Mr. Somerled MacDonald was
taking me.

"And Somerled himself, and the others?" he asked.

"Oh, they're going on," said I, "leaving me behind."

He looked delighted; so perhaps he had not forgiven the Vannecks for
laughing.

BOOK III

BASIL'S PLOT AND "MRS. BAL"

I

Will the time come, I wonder, when I can calmly "work up" these things
into a plot? If so, I foresee that I shall have to toss a coin to decide
on the casting of my own part in the story. Heads, I am hero; tails, I
am villain. But it has always been a theory of mine that ninety-nine out
of a hundred novels are unjust toward some of their principal
characters. Each (alleged) villain ought to have his motives and actions
explained from his own point of view, not according to that of the (also
alleged) hero and heroine whom he possibly tries (with success or
failure) to separate. If this were done in books, villains _qua_
villains would practically cease to exist; for it seems to me, in my
experience of life as a man and a writer, that no normal, healthy
villain is a villain in his own eyes. To understand all is to pardon
all; and in analyzing his motives in order to justify himself to
himself, he sees from every point of vantage, he knows how necessary
certain actions are which appear evil to the limited view of the hero
and heroine. They see him always obliquely, in profile; therefore they
are prejudiced. And what is doubly unfair to the poor villain, the
author of the book sympathizes with the others from first to last;
whereas, if the villain were allowed to explain himself in his own way,
not the author's, he would stand in the centre of the picture. Not being
prejudiced against himself, he would have a chance of appealing to the
readers' sense of justice.

Unfortunately for me, I have a way of seeing two sides of a question at
once, even when my own interests and those of another are violently
opposed. This is a kind of moral colour-blindness; for to be
colour-blind means merely that your eyes give you an impression of red
and green at the same tune, so that you can with difficulty tell which
is which. Both kinds of colour-blindness, moral and physical, handicap
you for success in life. On the whole, I think the moral sort is the
more inconvenient of the two. If you saw nobody's motives but your own,
you would be able honestly to detest your enemy and work against him.
You would then be happy and successful, because of