, great
will and power of mind may resist the force that precipitates him and
save his soul alive--this is, I trust, a motive no less worthy, no less
profitable to study, in the utmost result no less heroic and inspiring,
than that of tracing the upward path of noble types of mind. For me
there has been a pathetic, and I think purifying, interest in looking
into the soul of this man and seeing it corrode beneath the touch of a
powerful temptation until at the last, when it seems to lie spent, it
rises again in strength and shows that the human heart has no depths in
which it is lost. If this character had been equal to my intention, it
might have been a real contribution to fiction, and far as I know it to
fall short of the first deep blow of feeling in which it was conceived,
it is, I think, new to the novel, though it holds a notable place in the
drama--it would be presumptuous to say where--unnecessary, also, as I
have made no disguise of my purpose.

One of the usual disadvantages of choosing a leading character that is
off the lines of heroic portraiture is that the author may seem to be in
sympathy with a base part in life and with base opinions. In this novel
I run a different risk. I shall not be surprised if I provoke some
hostility in making the bad man justify his course by the gaunt and grim
morality that masquerades as the morality of our own time, while the
good man is made to justify his one dubious act by the full and sincere
and just morality that too often wears now the garb of vice--the
morality of the books of Moses. This novel relies, I trust, on the sheer
humanities alone, but among its less aggressive purposes is that of a
plea for the natural rights of the bastard. Those rights have been
recognized in every country and by every race, except one, since the day
when the outcast woman in the wilderness hearkened to the cry from
heaven which said, "God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is." In
England alone have the rights of blood been as nothing compared with
the rights of property, and it is part of the business of this novel to
exhibit these interests at a climax of strife. I have no fear that any
true-hearted person will accuse me of a desire to cast reproach upon
marriage as an ordinance. Recognizing the beauty and the sanctity of
marriage, I have tried to show that true marriage is a higher thing than
a ceremony, and that people who use the gibbet and stake for offenders
against its for