Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/137

 and daring experiment once actually attempted," and offered to those who are interested in the unseen possibilities of the Hereafter. It is the story of a man "who voluntarily sacrificed his whole worldly career in a supreme effort to prove the apparently Unprovable."

This persistent probing on Marie Corelli's part of what most writers shun and very few have ever attempted to solve, is one of the secrets of her great sales. Turn to page 319 of "The Soul of Lilith," and you will find the matter put neatly in a nutshell:

"And so it happens that when wielders of the pen essay to tell us of wars; of shipwrecks, of hair-*breadth escapes from danger, of love and politics and society, we read their pages with merely transitory pleasure and frequent indifference, but when they touch upon subjects beyond earthly experience—when they attempt, however feebly, to lift our inspirations to the possibilities of the Unseen, then we give them our eager attention and almost passionate interest."

This passage may afford a little light to those people who are forever declaring that they cannot understand what other people can see in Marie Corelli. The fact is, Marie Corelli appeals to a tremendous section of the public—a section in which, we are assured, the fair sex does not pre