IV. ["Come Unto These Yellow Sands"]
V. [In which Adrian Makes Disquieting Acquaintance with the Long Arm of Coincidence]
VI. [Concerning a Curse, and the Manner of Its Going Home to Roost]
VII. [Some Passages from Joanna Smyrthwaite's Locked Book]
VIII. [In which a Strong Man Adopts a Very Simple Method of Clearing His Own Path of Thorns]
IX. [Wherein Adrian Savage Succeeds in Awakening La Belle au Bois Dormant]
PREFATORY NOTE
I will ask my readers kindly to understand that this book is altogether a work of fiction. The characters it portrays, their circumstances and the episodes in which they play a part, are my own invention.
Every sincere and scientific student of human nature and the social scene must, of necessity, depend upon direct observation of life for his general types—the said types being the composite photographs with which study and observation have supplied him. But, for the shaping of individual characters out of the said types, he should, in my opinion, rely exclusively upon his imagination and his sense of dramatic coherence. Exactly in proportion as he does this can he claim to be a true artist. Since the novel, to be a work of art, must be impersonal, neither autobiographical nor biographical.—I am not, of course, speaking of the historical novel, whether the history involved be ancient or contemporary, nor am I speaking of an admitted satire.
I wish further to assure my readers that the names of my characters have been selected at random; and belong, certainly in sequence of Christian and surname, to no persons with whom I am, or ever have been, acquainted. I may also add that although I have often visited Stourmouth and its neighborhood—of which I am very fond—my knowledge of the social life of the district is of the smallest, while my knowledge of its municipal and commercial life is nil.