truthfulness of his art; it is there, it surrounds the scene, it presses
close upon it. It is made visible, tangible, in the struggles, in the
contacts of the fine consciences, in their perplexities, in the sophism
of their mistakes. For a fine conscience is naturally a virtuous one.
What is natural about it is just its fineness, an abiding sense of the
intangible, ever-present, right. It is most visible in their ultimate
triumph, in their emergence from miracle, through an energetic act of
renunciation. Energetic, not violent: the distinction is wide, enormous,
like that between substance and shadow.

Through it all Mr. Henry James keeps a firm hold of the substance, of
what is worth having, of what is worth holding. The contrary opinion has
been, if not absolutely affirmed, then at least implied, with some
frequency. To most of us, living willingly in a sort of intellectual
moonlight, in the faintly reflected light of truth, the shadows so firmly
renounced by Mr. Henry James's men and women, stand out endowed with
extraordinary value, with a value so extraordinary that their rejection
offends, by its uncalled-for scrupulousness, those business-like
instincts which a careful Providence has implanted in our breasts. And,
apart from that just cause of discontent, it is obvious that a solution
by rejection must always present a certain lack of finality, especially
startling when contrasted with the usual methods of solution by rewards
and punishments, by crowned love, by fortune, by a broken leg or a sudden
death. Why the reading public which, as a body, has never laid upon a
story-teller the command to be an artist, should demand from him this
sham of Divine Omnipotence, is utterly incomprehensible. But so it is;
and these solutions are legitimate inasmuch as they satisfy the desire
for finality, for which our hearts yearn with a longing greater than the
longing for the loaves and fishes of this earth. Perhaps the only true
desire of mankind, coming thus to light in its hours of leisure, is to be