competent to make an "advance" on rare objects confided to him,
is conscious of the rare little "piece" left in deposit by the
reduced, mysterious lady of title or the speculative amateur, and
which is already there to disclose its merit afresh as soon as a
key shall have clicked in a cupboard-door.

That may he, I recognise, a somewhat superfine analogy for the
particular "value" I here speak of, the image of the young
feminine nature that I had had for so considerable a time all
curiously at my disposal; but it appears to fond memory quite to
fit the fact--with the recall, in addition, of my pious desire but
to place my treasure right. I quite remind myself thus of the
dealer resigned not to "realise," resigned to keeping the
precious object locked up indefinitely rather than commit it, at
no matter what price, to vulgar hands. For there ARE dealers in
these forms and figures and treasures capable of that refinement.
The point is, however, that this single small corner-stone, the
conception of a certain young woman affronting her destiny, had
begun with being all my outfit for the large building of "The
Portrait of a Lady." It came to be a square and spacious house--
or has at least seemed so to me in this going over it again; but,
such as it is, it had to be put up round my young woman while she
stood there in perfect isolation. That is to me, artistically
speaking, the circumstance of interest; for I have lost myself
once more, I confess, in the curiosity of analysing the
structure. By what process of logical accretion was this slight
"personality," the mere slim shade of an intelligent but
presumptuous girl, to find itself endowed with the high
attributes of a Subject?--and indeed by what thinness, at the
best, would such a subject not be vitiated? Millions of