er the loneliness of innumerable hearts, to the solidarity
in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in
fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all
humanity--the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.

It is only some such train of thought, or rather of feeling, that can in
a measure explain the aim of the attempt, made in the tale which
follows, to present an unrestful episode in the obscure lives of a few
individuals out of all the disregarded multitude of the bewildered, the
simple and the voiceless. For, if any part of truth dwells in the belief
confessed above, it becomes evident that there is not a place of
splendour or a dark corner of the earth that does not deserve, if only a
passing glance of wonder and pity. The motive, then, may be held to
justify the matter of the work; but this preface, which is simply an
avowal of endeavour, cannot end here--for the avowal is not yet
complete.

Fiction--if it at all aspires to be art--appeals to temperament. And in
truth it must be, like painting, like music, like all art, the appeal of
one temperament to all the other innumerable temperaments whose subtle
and resistless power endows passing events with their true meaning, and
creates the moral, the emotional atmosphere of the place and time. Such
an appeal to be effective must be an impression conveyed through the
senses; and, in fact, it cannot be made in any other way, because
temperament, whether individual or collective, is not amenable to
persuasion. All art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses, and the
artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must also make its
appeal through the senses, if its high desire is to reach the secret
spring of responsive emotions. It must strenuously aspire to the
plasticity of sculpture, to the colour of painting, and to the magic
suggestiveness of music--which is the art of arts. And it is only
through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form
and substance; it is only through an unremitting never-discouraged care
for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to
plasticity, to colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be
brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface
of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless
usage.

The sincere endeavour to accomplish that creative task, to go as far on
that road as his s