the general situation exhibited. They are there, for what they
are worth, and as numerous as might be; but my memory, I confess,
is a blank as to how and whence they came.

I seem to myself to have waked up one morning in possession of
them--of Ralph Touchett and his parents, of Madame Merle, of
Gilbert Osmond and his daughter and his sister, of Lord
Warburton, Caspar Goodwood and Miss Stackpole, the definite array
of contributions to Isabel Archer's history. I recognised them, I
knew them, they were the numbered pieces of my puzzle, the
concrete terms of my "plot." It was as if they had simply, by an
impulse of their own, floated into my ken, and all in response to
my primary question: "Well, what will she DO?" Their answer seemed
to be that if I would trust them they would show me; on which,
with an urgent appeal to them to make it at least as interesting
as they could, I trusted them. They were like the group of
attendants and entertainers who come down by train when people
in the country give a party; they represented the contract for
carrying the party on. That was an excellent relation with them
--a possible one even with so broken a reed (from her slightness
of cohesion) as Henrietta Stackpole. It is a familiar truth to
the novelist, at the strenuous hour, that, as certain elements
in any work are of the essence, so others are only of the form;
that as this or that character, this or that disposition of the
material, belongs to the subject directly, so to speak, so this
or that other belongs to it but indirectly--belongs intimately to
the treatment. This is a truth, however, of which he rarely gets
the benefit--since it could be assured to him, really, but by
criticism based upon perception, criticism which is too little of
this world. He must not think of benefits, moreover, I freely