analyse in YOUR way, oh yes--to relate, to report, to explain; but you
can't disintegrate my synthesis; you can't resolve the elements of my
whole into different responsible agents or find your way at all (for
your own fell purpose). My mixture has only to be perfect literally to
bewilder you--you are lost in the tangle of the forest. Prove this
value, this effect, in the air of the whole result, to be of my subject,
and that other value, other effect, to be of my treatment, prove that I
haven't so shaken them together as the conjurer I profess to be MUST
consummately shake, and I consent but to parade as before a booth at the
fair." The exemplary closeness of "The Awkward Age" even affects me, on
re-perusal, I confess, as treasure quite instinctively and foreseeingly
laid up against my present opportunity for these remarks. I have been
positively struck by the quantity of meaning and the number of
intentions, the extent of GROUND FOR INTEREST, as I may call it, that I
have succeeded in working scenically, yet without loss of sharpness,
clearness or "atmosphere," into each of my illuminating occasions--
where, at certain junctures, the due preservation of all these values
took, in the familiar phrase, a good deal of doing.

I should have liked just here to re-examine with the reader some of the
positively most artful passages I have in mind--such as the hour of Mr.
Longdon's beautiful and, as it were, mystic attempt at a compact with
Vanderbank, late at night, in the billiard-room of the country-house at
which they are staying; such as the other nocturnal passage, under Mr.
Longdon's roof, between Vanderbank and Mitchy, where the conduct of so
much fine meaning, so many flares of the exhibitory torch through the
labyrinth of mere immediate appearances, mere familiar allusions, is
successfully and safely effected; such as the whole array of the terms
of presentation that are made to serve, all systematically, yet without
a gap anywhere, for the presentation, throughout, of a Mitchy "subtle"