This arrangement would need careful handling to render it plausible; but
it could be done. I am now of opinion, however, that I should have done
well to have given up the whole fundamental idea of the story, as
suggested by the dream. The dream had done its office when it had provided
me with characters and materials for a more probable and less abstruse and
difficult plot. All further dependence upon it should then have been
relinquished, and the story allowed to work out its own natural and
unforced conclusion. But it is easy to be wise after the event; and the
event, at this time, was still in the future.

As Madeleine was to be the opposite of the sinless, ideal woman that Jack
was to imagine her to be, it was necessary to subject her to some evil
influence; and this influence was embodied in the form of Bryan Sinclair,
who, though an afterthought, came to be the most powerful figure in the
story. But, before he would bring himself to bear upon her, she must have
reached womanhood; and I also perceived that Jack must become a man before
the action of the story, as between him and Madeleine, could continue. An
interval of ten or fifteen years must therefore occur; and this was
arranged by sending Jack into the western wilderness of California, and
fixing the period as just preceding the date of the California gold fever
of '49.

Jack and Bryan were to be rivals for Madeleine; but artistic
considerations seemed to require that they should first meet and become
friends much in the same way that Jack and Madeleine had done. So I sent
Bryan to California, and made him the original discoverer of the precious
metal there; brought him and Jack together; and finally sent them to
England in each other's company. Jack, of course, as yet knows nothing of
his origin, and appears in London society merely as a natural genius and a
sculptor of wild animals.