“The Lawton Girl” suggested itself at the outset as a kind of sequel to “Seth’s Brother’s Wife,” but here I found myself confronted by agencies and influences the existence of which I had not previously suspected. In “Seth’s Brother’s Wife” I had made the characters do just what I wanted them to do, and the notion that my will was not altogether supreme had occurred neither to them nor to me. The same had been true of “In the Valley,” where indeed the people were so necessarily subordinated to the evolution of the story which they illustrated rather than shaped, that their personalities always remained shadowy in my own mind. But in “The Lawton Girl,” to my surprise at first, and then to my interested delight, the people took matters into their own hands quite from the start. It seemed only by courtesy that I even presided over their meetings, and that my sanction was asked for their comings and goings. As one of many examples, I may cite the interview between Jessica and Horace in the latter’s office. In my folly, I had prepared for her here a part of violent and embittered denunciation, full of scornful epithets and merciless jibes; to my discomfiture, she relented at the first sight of his gray hair and troubled mien, when I had brought her in, and would have none of my heroics whatever. Once reconciled to the posture of a spectator, I grew so interested in the doings of these people that I lost sight of a time-limit; they wandered along for two years, making the story in leisurely fashion as they went. At the end I did assert my authority, and kill Jessica--she who had not deserved or intended at all to die--but I see now more clearly than any one else that it was a false and cowardly thing to do.