The difficulty of finishing the book arose first of all from its length. I well remember the depressed countenance of Mr. George Smith--who was to be to me through fourteen years afterward the kindest of publishers and friends--when I called one day in Waterloo Place, bearing a basketful of typewritten sheets. "I am afraid you have brought us a perfectly unmanageable book!" he said; and I could only mournfully agree that so it was. It was far too long, and my heart sank at the thought of all there was still to do. But how patient Mr. Smith was over it! and how generous in the matter of unlimited fresh proofs and endless corrections. I am certain that he had no belief in the book's success; and yet, on the ground of his interest in _Miss Bretherton_ he had made liberal terms with me, and all through the long incubation he was always indulgent and sympathetic. The root difficulty was of course the dealing with such a subject in a novel at all. Yet I was determined to deal with it so, in order to reach the public. There were great precedents--Froude's _Nemesis of Faith_, Newman's _Loss and Gain_, Kingsley's _Alton Locke_--for the novel of religious or social propaganda. And it seemed to me that the novel was capable of holding and shaping real experience of any kind, as it affects the lives of men and women. It is the most elastic, the most adaptable of forms. No one has a right to set limits to its range. There is only one final test. Does it interest?--does it appeal? Personally, I should add another. Does it make in the long run for _beauty_? Beauty taken in the largest and most generous sense, and especially as including discord, the harsh and jangled notes which enrich the rest--but still Beauty--as Tolstoy was a master of it? But at any rate, no one will deny that _interest_ is the crucial matter. There are five and twenty ways Of constructing tribal lays-- And every single one of them is right! always supposing that the way chosen quickens the breath and stirs the heart of those who listen. But when the subject chosen has two aspects, the one intellectual and logical, the other poetic and emotional, the difficulty of holding the balance between them, so that neither overpowers the other, and interest is maintained, is admittedly great. I wanted to show how a man of sensitive and noble character, born for religion, comes to throw off the orthodoxies of his day and moment, and to go out into the wilderness where all is experiment, and spiritual life begins again. And with him I wished to contrast a type no less fine of the traditional and guided mind, and to imagine the clash of two such tendencies of thought as it might affect all practical life, and especially the life of two people who loved each other.