Perhaps I may say something on the strength of my limited experience on the subject of novel-writing. It may seem presumptuous to do so, seeing that everybody nowadays either writes a novel or thinks that he or she can do so. My own experience taught me that in novel-writing, as in most descriptions of work, there is a particular knack to be acquired before success can be attained. I think I must have been absolutely without this knack when I began to write "Gladys Fane." I was a good descriptive writer, and could describe either scenery or action sufficiently well, but when I tried my hand at conversation I was utterly at sea. I could not make my men and women talk as men and women do in real life. Before I had finished the story I had got the knack, and if I were ever to write another I have no doubt that I could manage the conversation fairly well. Of course, even without the knack a writer may achieve, under certain conditions, a great success; but to do so he must _feel_ his story; that is to say, it must be as real to him as if it were something that had actually happened. Undoubtedly I had this feeling about "Gladys Fane," and this, I imagine, was the one merit which secured for the book the degree of success that it attained. I remember that when I wrote the closing chapter, in which the hero meets with a tragical death, I was under the influence of as poignant an emotion as I should have experienced if I had been standing by the deathbed of my dearest friend. Great was my joy, after the story was published, to read a generous review of the book in the _Standard_, in which the reviewer said that he did not envy the man who could read that last chapter with a steady voice and an undimmed eye. I saw that others had been infected by the emotion which almost overwhelmed me as I penned the closing pages of the book.