how I could avoid becoming wearisome in the presentation of detail and in the pursuit of clearness. I saw the action plainly enough. What I had lost for the moment was the sense of the proper formula of expression, the only formula that would suit. This, of course, weakened my confidence in the intrinsic worth and in the possible interest of the story—that is in my invention. But I suspect that all the trouble was, in reality, the doubt of my prose, the doubt of its adequacy, of its power to master both the colours and the shades.     

       It is difficult to describe, exactly as I remember it, the complex state of my feelings; but those of my readers who take an interest in artistic perplexities will understand me best when I point out that I dropped “The Rescue” not to give myself up to idleness, regrets, or dreaming, but to begin “The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'” and to go on with it without hesitation and without a pause. A comparison of any page of “The Rescue”        with any page of “The Nigger” will furnish an ocular demonstration of the nature and the inward meaning of this first crisis of my writing life. For it was a crisis undoubtedly. The laying aside of a work so far advanced was a very awful decision to take. It was wrung from me by a sudden conviction that there only was the road of salvation, the clear way out for an uneasy conscience. The finishing of “The Nigger” brought to my troubled mind the comforting sense of an accomplished task, and the first consciousness of a certain sort of mastery which could accomplish something with the aid of propitious stars. Why I did not return to “The Rescue” at once then, was not for the reason that I had grown afraid of it. Being able now to assume a firm attitude I said to myself deliberately: “That thing can wait.” At the same time I was just as certain in my mind that “Youth,” a story which I had then, so to speak, on       the tip of my pen, could not wait. Neither could “Heart of Darkness” be put off; for the practical reason that Mr. Wm. Blackwood having requested me to write something for the No. M of his magazine I had to stir up at once the subject of that tale which had been long lying quiescent in my mind, because, obviously, the venerable Maga at her patriarchal age of 1000 numbers could not be kept waiting. Then “Lord Jim,” with about seventeen pages already written at odd times, put in his claim which was irresistible. Thus every stroke of the pen was taking me further away from the abandoned “Rescue,” not without some compunction on my part 

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