regularly to exploit and enjoy these often rather rude jolts--
having found, as I believed an admirable way to it; yet every question
of form and pressure, I easily remember, paled in the light of the
major propriety, recognised as soon as really weighed; that of
employing but one centre and keeping it all within my hero's compass.
The thing was to be so much this worthy's intimate adventure that
even the projection of his consciousness upon it from beginning to end
without intermission or deviation would probably still leave a part of
its value for him, and a fortiori for ourselves, unexpressed.
I might, however, express every grain of it that there would be
room for--on condition of contriving a splendid particular economy.
Other persons in no small number were to people the scene, and each
with his or her axe to grind, his or her situation to treat, his or her
coherency not to fail of, his or her relation to my leading motive,
in a word, to establish and carry on. But Strether's sense of these
things, and Strether's only, should avail me for showing them;
I should know them but through his more or less groping knowledge
of them, since his very gropings would figure among his most interesting
motions, and a full observance of the rich rigour I speak of would
give me more of the effect I should be most "after" than all other
possible observances together. It would give me a large unity,
and that in turn would crown me with the grace to which the
enlightened story-teller will at any time, for his interest,
sacrifice if need be all other graces whatever. I refer of course
to the grace of intensity, which there are ways of signally achieving
and ways of signally missing--as we see it, all round us, helplessly
and woefully missed. Not that it isn't, on the other hand, a virtue
eminently subject to appreciation--there being no strict, no absolute
measure of it; so that one may hear it acclaimed where it has quite
escaped one's perception, and see it unnoticed where one has gratefully