Its defect as a movement was that its supporters, also, probably aimed rather at displaying personal cleverness than at the concealment of themselves beneath the surfaces of their works. They had not yet learnt the sternest of all lessons--that the story is the thing, and the story and then the story, and that there is nothing else that matters in the world. _L’ENVOI_ IN THE LAST QUARTER OF A CENTURY When the dust of the _Yellow Book_ period died away with the trial and disappearance of Wilde there did nevertheless remain in the public and the literary mind some conception that novel-writing was an art and that the novel was a vehicle by means of which every kind of psychological or scientific truth connected with human life and affairs could be very fittingly conveyed. To-day I imagine that there would not be many found to deny that it is the vehicle by means of which those truths can be most fittingly investigated. To that we may some day return. In the meantime the _Yellow Book_ period also left behind it three men whose names must for ever stand out for the student of the history of the English Novel--they were Henry James, Stephen Crane, and Joseph Conrad. I do not purpose here to attempt an estimate of any one of the three; I merely wish to point out what it was that distinguished them from all of their predecessors and nearly all of their distinguished contemporaries. Their distinguished contemporaries are all, most fortunately, still alive and so beyond the reach of my pen--but it must, I imagine, he fairly obvious that, say, Mr. Wells, Mr. Kipling, Mr. Galsworthy, or Mr. Arnold Bennett are each solitary figures, ploughing lonely furrows and expressing their admirable selves in admirable ways known only to themselves. About that other triad there was a certain solidarity, a certain oneness of method and even a certain comradeship. They lived in the same corner of England, saw each other often and discussed literary methods more thoroughly and more frequently than can ever at any other time in England have been the case. To be sure, not one of the three was English. Indeed, some ten years or so ago my friend Mr. Wells wrote to the papers to say that in the first decade of this century a group of foreigners occupied that corner of England and were engaged in plotting against the English novel. At the time that appeared to be the sort of patriotic nonsense that occupied our minds a good deal just after the War--but Mr. Wells, as usual, was right. The extent of the conspiracy was this: the works of those three writers whose influence on the Anglo-Saxon--and even to some extent on the British--novel was overwhelming--were united by a common technique and their literary aims were to all intents exactly the same.