As you had conceived and written the earlier parts, the truth about the end, though indisputably true to fact, would have been a lie, or what is worse, a discord, in art.
If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly from the beginning.

Now, your book began to end well.

You let yourself fall in love with, and fondle, and smile at your puppets.

Once you had done that, your honour was committed--at the cost of truth to life you were bound to save them.

It is the blot on _Richard Feverel_ for instance, that it begins to end well; and then tricks you and ends ill.