with added incomprehensibility annotated "(?Phorgemon)." And "The Spirit
Who Had Half of Everything" seems to have been exorcised pretty
thoroughly.... No; I find the most of my old notes as to this book
merely bewildering; and I find, too, something of pathos in these
embryons of unborn dreams which, for one cause or another, were
obliterated and have been utterly forgotten by their creator, very much
as in this book vexed Miramon Lluagor twists off the head of a not quite
satisfactory, whimpering design, and drops the valueless fragments into
his waste-basket.... But I do know that the entire book developed,
howsoever helterskelter, and after fumbling in no matter how many blind
alleys, from that first memorandum about the troubling window of Ageus.
All leads toward--and through--that window.


The book, then, was published in the February of 1921. I need not here
deal with its semi-serial appearance in the guise of short stories:
these details are recorded elsewhere. But I confess with appropriate
humility that the reception of "Figures of Earth" by the public was, as
I have written in another place, a depressing business. This romance, at
that time, through one extraneous reason and another, disappointed
well-nigh everybody, for all that it has since become, so near as I can
judge, the best liked of my books, especially among women. It seems,
indeed, a fact sufficiently edifying that, in appraising the two
legendary heroes of Poictesme, the sex of whom Jurgen esteemed himself a
connoisseur, should, almost unanimously, prefer Manuel.

For the rest,--since, as you may remember, this is the third preface
which I have written for this book,--I can but repeat more or less what
I have conceded elsewhere. This "Figures of Earth" appeared immediately
following, and during the temporary sequestration of, "Jurgen." The fact