esson of my retrospect would seem to be really a supreme
revision of the question of what it may be for a subject to suffer,
to call it suffering, by over-treatment. Bowed down so long by the
inference that its product had in this case proved such a betrayal, my
artistic conscience meets the relief of having to recognise truly here
no traces of suffering. The thing carries itself to my maturer and
gratified sense as with every symptom of soundness, an insolence of
health and joy. And from this precisely I deduce my moral; which is to
the effect that, since our only way, in general, of knowing that we have
had too much of anything is by FEELING that too much: so, by the same
token, when we don't feel the excess (and I am contending, mind, that in
"The Awkward Age" the multiplicity yields to the order) how do we know
that the measure not recorded, the notch not reached, does represent
adequacy or satiety? The mere feeling helps us for certain degrees of
congestion, but for exact science, that is for the criticism of "fine"
art, we want the notation. The notation, however, is what we lack, and
the verdict of the mere feeling is liable to fluctuate. In other words
an imputed defect is never, at the worst, disengageable, or other than
matter for appreciation--to come back to my claim for that felicity of
the dramatist's case that his synthetic "whole" IS his form, the only
one we have to do with. I like to profit in his company by the fact that
if our art has certainly, for the impression it produces, to defer to
the rise and fall, in the critical temperature, of the telltale mercury,
it still hasn't to reckon with the engraved thermometer-face.

HENRY JAMES.

THE AWKWARD AGE

BOOK FIRST. LADY JULIA

I

Save when it happened to rain Vanderbank always walked home, but
he usually took a hansom when the rain was moderate and adopted the
preference of the philosopher when it was heavy. On this occasion he
therefore recognised as the servant opened the door a congruity between
the weather and the "four-wheeler" that, in the empty street, under the
glazed radiance, waited and trickled and blackly glittered. The butler
mentioned it as on such a wild night the only thing they could get,
and Vanderbank, having replied that it was exactly what would do best,
prepared in the doorway to put up his umbrella and dash down to it.
At this moment he heard his name pronounced from behind and on turning
found himself join