Here then, to begin with, were Robert and Catharine. Yes, but Robert
must be made intellectually intelligible. Closely looked at, all
novel-writing is a sort of shorthand. Even the most simple and broadly
human situation cannot really be told in full. Each reader in following
it unconsciously supplies a vast amount himself. A great deal of the
effect is owing to things quite out of the picture given--things in the
reader's own mind, first and foremost. The writer is playing on common
experience; and mere suggestion is often far more effective than
analysis. Take the paragraph in Turguenieff's _Lisa_--it was pointed out
to me by Henry James--where Lavretsky on the point of marriage, after
much suffering, with the innocent and noble girl whom he adores,
suddenly hears that his intolerable first wife, whom he had long
believed dead, is alive. Turguenieff, instead of setting out the
situation in detail, throws himself on the reader: "It was dark.
Lavretsky went into the garden, and walked up and down there till dawn."

That is all. And it is enough. The reader who is not capable of sharing
that night walk with Lavretsky, and entering into his thoughts, has read
the novel to no purpose. He would not understand, though Lavretsky or
his creator were to spend pages on explaining.

But in my case, what provoked the human and emotional crisis--what
produced the _story_--was an intellectual process. Now the difficulty
here in using suggestion--which is the master tool of the novelist--is
much greater than in the case of ordinary experience. For the conscious
use of the intellect on the accumulated data of life, through history
and philosophy, is not ordinary experience. In its more advanced forms,
it only applies to a small minority of the human race.