was but
a very small amount of plunder. All of it could go into one's breast
pocket when folded neatly. As for the story itself it is true enough in
its essentials. The sustained invention of a really telling lie demands
a talent which I do not possess.

"The Idiots" is such an obviously derivative piece of work that it is
impossible for me to say anything about it here. The suggestion of it
was not mental but visual: the actual idiots. It was after an interval
of long groping amongst vague impulses and hesitations which ended in
the production of "The Nigger" that I turned to my third short story in
the order of time, the first in this volume: "Karain: A Memory."

Reading it after many years "Karain" produced on me the effect of
something seen through a pair of glasses from a rather advantageous
position. In that story I had not gone back to the Archipelago, I had
only turned for another look at it. I admit that I was absorbed by the
distant view, so absorbed that I didn't notice then that the motif of
the story is almost identical with the motif of "The Lagoon." However,
the idea at the back is very different; but the story is mainly made
memorable to me by the fact that it was my first contribution to
"Blackwood's Magazine" and that it led to my personal acquaintance with
Mr. William Blackwood whose guarded appreciation I felt nevertheless
to be genuine, and prized accordingly. "Karain" was begun on a sudden
impulse only three days after I wrote the last line of "The Nigger," and
the recollection of its difficulties is mixed up with the worries of
the unfinished "Return," the last pages of which I took up again at the
time; the only instance in my life when I made an attempt to write with
both hands at once as it were.

Indeed my innermost feeling, now, is that "The Return" is a left-handed
production. Looking through that story lately I had the material
impression of sitting under a large and expensive umbrella in the loud
drumming of a heavy rain-shower. It was very distracting. In the general
uproar one could hear every individual drop strike on the stout and
distended silk. Mentally, the reading rendered me dumb for the remainder
of the day, not exactly with astonishment but with a sort of dismal
wonder. I don't want to talk disrespectfully of any pages of mine.
Psychologically there were no doubt good reasons for my attempt; and it
was worth while, if only to see of what excesses I was capable in that
sort of