THE SENSATIONALISTS: III THE SECRET VICTORY STEPHEN McKENNA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ BY STEPHEN MCKENNA ———————————————————————————————— THE SENSATIONALISTS PART ONE: LADY LILITH PART TWO: THE EDUCATION OF ERIC LANE PART THREE: THE SECRET VICTORY SONIA MARRIED SONIA MIDAS AND SON NINETY-SIX HOURS’ LEAVE THE SIXTH SENSE SHEILA INTERVENES ———————————————————————————————— NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE SECRET VICTORY BY STEPHEN McKENNA AUTHOR OF “LADY LILITH,” “SONIA MARRIED,” “THE EDUCATION OF ERIC LANE,” “SONIA,” “NINETY-SIX HOURS’ LEAVE,” ETC. NEW YORK [Printer's decoration] GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY [Printer's decoration] PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS WITH GRATITUDE TO TEX WITH LOVE ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _Epistle Dedicatory_ TO ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS You, who have read the three volumes of _The Sensationalists_ in manuscript, place me under further obligation by allowing me to dedicate the third to you in commemoration of a friendship which has been long, intimate and—to me—unmatched. Though I acquit you of responsibility for shortcomings in anything that I have written, the tale of these shortcomings would have been far longer if I had not availed myself of your unfailing vigilance and ever-ready help, as I have profited by your sensitive criticism and sympathetic encouragement. The novel-trilogy is so little acclimatized to latter-day Georgian England that, though it may need no defence, it has provoked attacks from readers who will suffer all artistic forms but those which are offered to the public in his present majesty’s reign; I say no more in its apology than that it provides a convenient medium for a study in which the story-teller occupies, in succession, three different standpoints. In _Lady Lilith_, the emotion hunters and sensation-mongers who supply the drama of this trilogy are still practising their poses in mirrored and passionless detachment; in _The Education of Eric Lane_, artifice has grown to such strength that, in its contest with reality, the battle—between antagonists no longer detached nor passionless—stands drawn; in _The Secret Victory_, a close contact with reality deflates the tumid pretensions of artifice and forces an amateur company of tragi-comedians into the revealing daylight of the open street. Even if it had been possible to present these three phases in a single volume, I should have been sorry to lose the interval which bridged the transition from one phase to another.