reared with an "architectural" competence, as Turgenieff would
have said, that makes it, to the author's own sense, the most
proportioned of his productions after "The Ambassadors" which was
to follow it so many years later and which has, no doubt, a
superior roundness. On one thing I was determined; that, though I
should clearly have to pile brick upon brick for the creation of
an interest, I would leave no pretext for saying that anything is
out of line, scale or perspective. I would build large--in fine
embossed vaults and painted arches, as who should say, and yet
never let it appear that the chequered pavement, the ground under
the reader's feet, fails to stretch at every point to the base of
the walls. That precautionary spirit, on re-perusal of the book,
is the old note that most touches me: it testifies so, for my own
ear, to the anxiety of my provision for the reader's amusement. I
felt, in view of the possible limitations of my subject, that no
such provision could be excessive, and the development of the
latter was simply the general form of that earnest quest. And I
find indeed that this is the only account I can give myself of
the evolution of the fable it is all under the head thus named
that I conceive the needful accretion as having taken place, the
right complications as having started. It was naturally of the
essence that the young woman should be herself complex; that was
rudimentary--or was at any rate the light in which Isabel Archer
had originally dawned. It went, however, but a certain way, and
other lights, contending, conflicting lights, and of as many
different colours, if possible, as the rockets, the Roman candles
and Catherine-wheels of a "pyrotechnic display," would be
employable to attest that she was. I had, no doubt, a groping
instinct for the right complications, since I am quite unable to
track the footsteps of those that constitute, as the case stands,