Aylwin

Though written many years ago this story was, for certain personal reasons easy to guess, withheld from publication--withheld, as The Times pointed out, because 'with the Dichtung was mingled a good deal of _Wahrheit_,' But why did I still delay in publishing it after these reasons for withholding it had passed away? This is a question that has often been put to me both in print and in conversation. And yet I should have imagined that the explanation was not far to seek. It was simply diffidence; in other words it was that infirmity which, though generally supposed to belong to youth, comes to a writer, if it comes at all, with years. Undoubtedly there was a time in my life when I should have leapt with considerable rashness into the brilliant ranks of our contemporary novelists. But this was before I had reached what I will call