I
'As soon,' Dr. Chalmers used to say, 'as soon as a man comes to
understand that _GOD IS LOVE_, he is infallibly converted.' Mrs.
Florence L. Barclay wrote a book to show how Rodney Steele made that
momentous and transfiguring discovery. Rodney Steele--the hero of _The
Wall of Partition_--was a great traveler and a brilliant author. He had
wandered through India, Africa, Australia, Egypt, China and Japan, and
had written a novel colored with the local tints of each of the
countries he had visited. He was tall, strong, handsome, bronzed by many
suns, and--largely as a result of his literary successes--immensely
rich. But he was soured. Years ago he loved a beautiful girl. But an
unscrupulous and designing woman had gained his sweetheart's confidence
and had poisoned her heart by pouring into her ear the most abominable
scandals concerning him. She had returned his letters; and he, in the
vain hope of being able to forget, had abandoned himself to travel and
to literature. But, on whatever seas he sailed, and on whatever shores
he wandered, he nursed in his heart a dreadful hate--a hate of the woman
who had so cruelly intervened. And, cherishing that hate, his heart
became hard and bitter and sour. He lost faith in love, in womanhood, in
God, in everything. And his books reflected the cynicism of his soul.
This is Rodney Steele as the story opens. The boat-train moves into
Charing Cross, and, after an absence of ten years, he finds himself once
more in London.