s told, not presuming to set up a
judgment of my own in the matter. If I had worked hard at the first
draft of the novel, I worked much harder at the second, especially as I
could not give all my leisure to it, being engaged at the time in
reading for the Bar. So hard did I work that at length my eyesight gave
out, and I was obliged to complete the last hundred sheets in a darkened
room. But let my eyes ache as they might, I would not give up till it
was finished, within about three months from the date of its
commencement. Recently, I went through this book to prepare it for a new
edition, chiefly in order to cut out some of the mysticism and tall
writing, for which it is too remarkable, and was pleased to find that it
still interested me. But if a writer may be allowed to criticise his own
work, it is two books, not one. Also, the hero is a very poor creature.
Evidently I was too much occupied with my heroines to give much thought
to him; moreover, women are so much easier and more interesting to write
about, for whereas no two of them are alike, in modern men, or rather,
in young men of the middle and upper classes, there is a paralysing
sameness. As a candid friend once said to me, 'There is nothing manly
about that chap, Arthur'--he is the hero--'except his bull-dog!' With
Angela herself I am still in love; only she ought to have died, which,
on the whole, would have been a better fate than being married to
Arthur, more especially if he was anything like the illustrator's
conception of him in the current edition.

In its new shape 'Dawn' was submitted to Messrs. Hurst & Blackett, and
at once accepted by that firm. Why it was called 'Dawn' I am not now
quite clear, but I think it was because I could find no other title
acceptable to the publishers. The discovery of suitable titles is a more
difficult matter than people who do not write romances would suppose,
most of the good ones having been used already and copyrighted. In due
course the novel was published in three fat volumes, and a pretty green
cover, and I sat down to await events. At the best I did not expect to
win a fortune out of it, as if every one of the five hundred copies
printed were sold, I could only make fifty pounds under my
agreement--not an extravagant reward for a great deal of labour. As a
matter of fact, but four hundred and fifty sold, so the net proceeds of
the venture amounted to ten pounds only, and forty surplus copies of the
book, which