In 1915 Mansfield began "The Aloe," which was to be a novel about New Zealand. On several occasions, Mansfield planned or began work on novels, always to abandon them. She got much further with "The Aloe" than with any other, but eventually she stopped writing it. The work she did on "The Aloe" was later cut and revised, becoming "Prelude," a departure from anything Mansfield had written before. The narrator has been virtually eliminated and the story divided into independent episodes. Mansfield used this episodic technique in only one other completed work, "At the Bay."