whom a moment before she had never so much as heard, a
turning-point in her life. It is dreadful to have too much, for
any artistic demonstration, to dot one's i's and insist on one's
intentions, and I am not eager to do it now; but the question
here was that of producing the maximum of intensity with the
minimum of strain.

The interest was to be raised to its pitch and yet the elements
to be kept in their key; so that, should the whole thing duly
impress, I might show what an "exciting" inward life may do for
the person leading it even while it remains perfectly normal. And
I cannot think of a more consistent application of that ideal
unless it be in the long statement, just beyond the middle of the
book, of my young woman's extraordinary meditative vigil on the
occasion that was to become for her such a landmark. Reduced to
its essence, it is but the vigil of searching criticism; but it
throws the action further forward that twenty "incidents" might
have done. It was designed to have all the vivacity of incidents
and all the economy of picture. She sits up, by her dying fire,
far into the night, under the spell of recognitions on which she
finds the last sharpness suddenly wait. It is a representation
simply of her motionlessly SEEING, and an attempt withal to make
the mere still lucidity of her act as "interesting" as the
surprise of a caravan or the identification of a pirate. It
represents, for that matter, one of the identifications dear to
the novelist, and even indispensable to him; but it all goes on
without her being approached by another person and without her
leaving her chair. It is obviously the best thing in the book,
but it is only a supreme illustration of the general plan. As to
Henrietta, my apology for whom I just left incomplete, she