ome of the references in these letters to his days of
self-despising. The period of waiting came to an end at last with the
publication in 1913 of his _Garden Without Walls_, which attained
immediate success. When he speaks in these letters of his brief burst of
fame, he refers to those crowded months in the Fall of 1913, when his
novel was being discussed on every hand, and, for the first time, he met
many writers of established reputation as an equal.

Another novel, _The Raft_, followed _The Garden Without Walls_. The
nature of his life now seemed fixed. To the task of novel-writing he had
brought a temperament highly idealistic and romantic, a fresh and vivid
imagination, and a thorough literary equipment. His life, as he planned
it, held but one purpose for him, outside the warmth and tenacity of
its affections--the triumph of the efficient purpose in the adequate
expression of his mind in literature. The austerity of his long years of
preparation had left him relatively indifferent to the common prizes of
life, though they had done nothing to lessen his intense joy in life.
His whole mind was concentrated on his art. His adventures would be the
adventures of the mind in search of ampler modes of expression. His
crusades would be the crusades of the spirit in search of the realities
of truth. He had received the public recognition which gave him faith in
himself and faith in his ability to achieve the reputation of the true
artist, whose work is not cheapened but dignified and broadened by
success. So he read the future, and so his critics read it for him. And
then, sudden and unheralded, there broke on this quiet life of
intellectual devotion the great storm of 1914. The guns that roared
along the Marne shattered all his purposes, and left him face to face
with a solemn spiritual exigency which admitted no equivocation.

At first, in common with multitudes more experienced than himself, he
did not fully comprehend the true measure of the cataclysm which had
overwhelmed the world. There had been wars before, and they had been
fought out by standing armies. It was incredible that any war should
last more than a few months. Again and again the world had been assured
that war would break down with its own weight, that no war could be
financed beyond a certain brief period, that the very nature of modern
warfare, with its terrible engines of destruction, made swift decisions
a necessity. The conception of a British War