_Peter Ibbetson_ was not put above _Trilby_ in the author's lifetime; but we believe it to have much more vitality than the latter work. The actual writing of it was not perhaps taken quite so seriously as that of _Trilby_, and it gains nothing on that account; but it is a book in which there is intensity, in which everything is not spread out thinly as in _Trilby_. Du Maurier himself believed that _Peter Ibbetson_ was the better book. It certainly witnesses to the nobility of the author's mind; it expresses the quick sympathy of the artist temperament--the instinct for finding extenuating circumstances which artists share with women, and which both rightly regard as the same thing as the sense of justice. The tale of _Peter Ibbetson_ breathes a great human sympathy. The simplicity with which it is written adds to its effect. We cross a track of horror in it by the ray of a generous light. It is by this book I like to think that du Maurier will be remembered as a writer. It was characteristic of him that he could touch a theme that in all superficial aspects was sordid without the loss of the bloom of true romance. The real plot of this story, however, does not lie with incident, but with the maintenance of an elevated frame of mind in defiance of circumstances. The author realises that mind triumphs always more easily over matter than over "circumstances." To the damage of the plot he brings his hero the utmost psychic assistance from an inadmissible source, but the picture of the prisoner's soul prevailing in the face of complete temporal disaster is still a true one. Du Maurier's publishers believed in _Trilby_ from the very first. They began by offering double the _Peter Ibbetson_ terms, while generously urging him to retain his rights in the book by accepting a little less in a lump sum and receiving a royalty. But so little faith did he pin to _Trilby_ that he said "No!" Within a few weeks the "boom" began. And when Harpers' saw what proportions it was likely to assume, they voluntarily destroyed the agreement, and arranged to allow him a handsome royalty on every copy sold. An admirer of Byron, du Maurier repudiated as cruelly unfair the poet's line, "Now Barabbas was a publisher." The publisher also handed over to him the dramatic rights with which he had parted for a small sum like fifty pounds, and thus he became a partner in the dramatic property called _Trilby_ as a "play." [Illustration] § 2