With each the question is what the
writer has done with his opportunity; and each answers the question for
itself in words which, if I may say so without undue solemnity, were
written with a conscientious regard for the truth of my own sensations.
And each of those stories, to mean something, must justify itself in its
own way to the conscience of each successive reader.

"Falk"--the second story in the volume--offended the delicacy of one
critic at least by certain peculiarities of its subject. But what is the
subject of "Falk"? I personally do not feel so very certain about it. He
who reads must find out for himself. My intention in writing "Falk"
was not to shock anybody. As in most of my writings I insist not on
the events but on their effect upon the persons in the tale. But in
everything I have written there is always one invariable intention, and
that is to capture the reader's attention, by securing his interest and
enlisting his sympathies for the matter in hand, whatever it may be,
within the limits of the visible world and within the boundaries of
human emotions.

I may safely say that Falk is absolutely true to my experience of
certain straightforward characters combining a perfectly natural
ruthlessness with a certain amount of moral delicacy. Falk obeys the law
of self-preservation without the slightest misgivings as to his right,
but at a crucial turn of that ruthlessly preserved life he will not
condescend to dodge the truth. As he is presented as sensitive enough to
be affected permanently by a certain unusual experience, that experience
had to be set by me before the reader vividly; but it is not the subject
of the tale. If we go by mere facts then the subject is Falk's attempt
to get married; in which the narrator of the tale finds himself
unexpectedly involved both on its ruthless and its delicate side.

"Falk" shares with one other of my stories ("The Return" in the "Tales
of Unrest" volume) the distinction of never having been serialized. I
think the copy was shown to the editor of some magazine who rejected it
indignantly on the sole ground that "the girl never says anything." This
is perfectly true. From first to last Hermann's niece utters no word in
the tale--and it is not because she is dumb, but for the simple reason
that whenever she happens to come under the observation of the narrator
she has either no occasion or is too profoundly moved to speak. The
editor, who obviously had read the