What is it that Novalis says? "It is certain my conviction gains
infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it." And what is a
novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men's existence strong enough to
take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose
accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride
of documentary history? Providence which saved my MS. from the Congo
rapids brought it to the knowledge of a helpful soul far out on the open
sea. It would be on my part the greatest ingratitude ever to forget the
sallow, sunken face and the deep-set, dark eyes of the young Cambridge
man (he was a "passenger for his health" on board the good ship Torrens
outward bound to Australia) who was the first reader of "Almayer's
Folly"--the very first reader I ever had. "Would it bore you very much
reading a MS. in a handwriting like mine?" I asked him one evening on
a sudden impulse at the end of a longish conversation whose subject was
Gibbon's History. Jacques (that was his name) was sitting in my cabin
one stormy dog-watch below, after bringing me a book to read from his
own travelling store.

"Not at all," he answered with his courteous intonation and a faint
smile. As I pulled a drawer open his suddenly aroused curiosity gave him
a watchful expression. I wonder what he expected to see. A poem, maybe.
All that's beyond guessing now. He was not a cold but a calm man, still
more subdued by disease--a man of few words and of an unassuming modesty
in general intercourse, but with something uncommon in the whole of his
person which set him apart from the undistinguished lot of our sixty
passengers. His eyes had a thoughtful introspective look. In his
attractive reserved manner, and in a veiled sympathetic voice he asked:

"What is this?" "It is a sort of tale," I answered with an effort. "It
is not even finished yet. Nevertheless I would like to know what you