possible removed from that of the nursery and the
schoolroom--as far as possible removed even, no doubt, in its appealing
"modernity," from that of supposedly privileged scenes of conversation
twenty years ago. The charm was, with a hundred other things, in
the freedom--the freedom menaced by the inevitable irruption of the
ingenuous mind; whereby, if the freedom should be sacrificed, what would
truly BECOME of the charm? The charm might be figured as dear to members
of the circle consciously contributing to it, but it was none the less
true that some sacrifice in some quarter would have to be made, and what
meditator worth his salt could fail to hold his breath while waiting
on the event? The ingenuous mind might, it was true, be suppressed
altogether, the general disconcertment averted either by some
master-stroke of diplomacy or some rude simplification; yet these
were ugly matters, and in the examples before one's eyes nothing ugly,
nothing harsh or crude, had flourished. A girl might be married off the
day after her irruption, or better still the day before it, to remove
her from the sphere of the play of mind; but these were exactly not
crudities, and even then, at the worst, an interval had to be bridged.
"The Awkward Age" is precisely a study of one of these curtailed or
extended periods of tension and apprehension, an account of the manner
in which the resented interference with ancient liberties came to be in
a particular instance dealt with.

I note once again that I had not escaped seeing it actually and
traceably dealt with--(I admit) a good deal of friendly suspense; also
with the nature and degree of the "sacrifice" left very much to one's
appreciation. In circles highly civilised the great things, the real
things, the hard, the cruel and even the tender things, the true
elements of any tension and true facts of any crisis, have ever, for the
outsider's, for the critic's use, to be translated into terms--terms
in the distinguished name of which, terms for the right employment of
which, more than one situation of the type I glance at had struck me as
all irresistibly appealing. There appeared in fact at moments no end to
the things they said, the suggestions into which they flowered; one
of these latter in especial arriving at the highest intensity. Putting
vividly before one the perfect system on which the awkward age is
handled in most other European societies, it threw again into relief
the inveterate