ht, I remember, over it.
How did those people come to be in exactly that situation? how would it
develop? At first it was just the scene by itself, nothing more; a room
which filled itself with furniture. There were doors--where did they
lead to? There were windows--where did they look out? The house was
full, too, of other people, whose quiet movements I heard. One person
entered the room, and then another; and so the story opened out. I saw
the wrong word spoken, I saw the mist of doubt and distress that filled
the girl's mind; I felt that I would have given anything to intervene,
to explain; but instead of speaking out, the girl confided in the wrong
person, who had an old grudge against the man, so old that it had
become instinctive and irrational. So the thing evolved itself. Then at
one time the story got entangled and confused. I could go no further.
The characters were by this time upon the scene, but they could not
speak. I then saw that I had made a mistake somewhere. The scaffolding
was all taken down, spar by spar, and still the defect was not
revealed. I must go, I saw, backwards; and so I felt my way, like a man
groping in the dark, into what had gone before, and suddenly came out
into the light. It was a mistake far back in the conception. I righted
it, and the story began to evolve itself again; this time with a
delicate certainty, that made me feel I was on the track at last. An
impressive scene was sacrificed--it was there that my idea had gone
wrong! As to the writing of it, I cannot say it was an effort. It wrote
itself. I was not creating; I was describing and selecting. There was
one scene in particular, a scene which has been praised by all the
reviewers. How did I invent it? I do not know. I had no idea what the
characters were to say when I began to write it, but one remark grew
inevitably and surely out of the one before. I was never at a loss; I
never stuck fast; indeed the one temptation which I firmly and
constantly resisted was the temptation to write morning, noon, and
night. Sometimes I had a horrible fear that I might not live to set
down what was so clear in my mind; but there is a certain freshness
which comes of self-restraint. Day after day, as I strolled, and read,
and talked, I used to hug myself at the thought of the beloved evening
hours that were coming, when I should fling myself upon the book with a
passionate zest, and feel it grow under my hand. And then it was done!
I rememb