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'' the suggestion of my publisher I have collected in one volume the six stories that follow: "A Fragment of Life," "The White People," "The Great God Pan," "The Inmost Light," "The Three Impostors," and "The Red Hand." Three of these have already been published in book form; the rest will, I think, be new to the great majority of my readers.''

''My fellow-authors will, I am sure, sympathize with me in the difficult task of finding a general title which is not obviously impertinent. The difficulty of the task will appear when it is recollected that Mr. Kipling, the inventor of some of the most wonderful and admirable tales that have ever been written, has been content (or compelled) to shirk the issue with such titles as "Life's Handicap" and "Many Inventions"; and Poe was not conspicuously happy in qualifying his tales as "Arabesque and Grotesque." Failure, then, is not altogether disgraceful; and the title I have chosen, "The House of Souls," will at all events hint at the nature of the contents.''