the method is
adopted. The author has so fashioned his book that his own part in the
narration is now unobtrusive to the last degree; he, the author, could
not imaginably figure there more discreetly. His part in the effect is
no more than that of the playwright, who vanishes and leaves his
people to act the story; only instead of men and women talking
together, in Strether's case there are innumerable images of thought
crowding across the stage, expressing the story in their behaviour.

But there is more in the book, as I suggested just now, than
Strether's vision and the play of his mind. In the _scenic_ episodes,
the colloquies that Strether holds, for example, with his sympathetic
friend Maria Gostrey, another turn appears in the author's procedure.
Throughout these clear-cut dialogues Strether's point of view still
reigns; the only eyes in the matter are still his, there is no sight
of the man himself as his companion sees him. Miss Gostrey is clearly
visible, and Madame de Vionnet and little Bilham, or whoever it may
be; the face of Strether himself is never turned to the reader. On the
evening of the first encounter between the elderly ambassador and the
young man, they sat together in a cafe of the boulevards and walked
away at midnight through quiet streets; and all through their
interview the fact of the young man's appearance is strongly dominant,
for it is this that first reveals to Strether how the young man has
been transformed by his commerce with the free world; and so his
figure is sharply before the reader as they talk. How Strether seemed
to Chad--this, too, is represented, but only by implication, through
Chad's speech and manner. It is essential, of course, that it should
be so, the one-sided vision is strictly enjoined by the method of the
whole book. But though the seeing eye is still with Strether, there is
a noticeable change in the author's way with him.

In these scenic dialogues, on the whole, we seem to have edged away
from Strether's consciousness. He sees, and we with him; but when he
_talks_ it is almost as though we were outside him and away from him
altogether. Not always, indeed; for in many of the scenes he is busily
brooding and thinking throughout, and we share his mind while he joins
in the talk. But still, on the whole, the author is inclined to leave
Strether alone when the scene is set. He talks the matter out with
Maria, he sits and talks with Madame de Vionnet, he strolls al