Mew York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1921,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1921.
*NOVELS BY THE SAME AUTHOR*
THE GAY-DOMBEYS
MRS. WARREN'S DAUGHTER
The central idea of this book came into my mind a great many years ago,
out in Africa, and was based to some extent on what actually happened at
Unguja and elsewhere. Yet, though there is more realism than might be
supposed in my descriptions and incidents and the imagined personalities
that appear in these pages, I have endeavoured so to disturb and
re-present the facets of my truths that they shall not wound the
feelings of any one living or of the surviving friends and relations of
the good and bad people I have known in East Africa, or of those in my
own land who were entangled in East African affairs.
But although I have pondered long over telling such a story, this
Romance of East Africa was mainly projected, created and put down on
paper when my wife and I stayed in the summer-autumn of last year at the
Swiss home, in the mountains, of a dear friend. There we amused
ourselves, as we swung in hammocks slung under pine-trees and gazed over
the panorama of the Southern Alps, by arguing and discussing as to what
the creations of my imagination would say to one another, how they would
act under given circumstances within the four corners ruled by Common
Sense and Probability: two guides who will, I hope, always guard my
faltering steps in fiction-writing.
Therefore, though dedications have lost their novelty and freshness, and
are now incitements to preciosity or payments in verbiage, I, to satisfy
my own sentiments of gratitude for a most delightful holiday of rest and
refreshment, dedicate this Romance to my hostess of the Chalet Soleil,
who founded this new Abbaye de Theleme for the recuperation of tired
minds and bodies, and enforced within its walls and walks and woods but
one precept:
*FAY CE QUE VOULDRAS.*