ognises, in the striking of such an hour, in the presence there,
among the gathering shades, of this personage, of 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 exemplifies,
I fear, in her superabundance, not an element of my plan, but only
an excess of my zeal. So early was to begin my tendency to OVERTREAT,
rather than undertreat (when there was choice or danger) my subject.
(Many members of my craft, I gather, are far from agreeing with me, but
I have always held overtreating the minor disservice.) "Treating" that
of "The Portrait" amounted to never forgetting, by any lapse, that the
thing was under a special obligation to be amusing. There was the danger
of the noted "thinness"--which was to be averted, tooth a