ther's impression, clearly, and so it is; the old garden
and the evening light and the shifting company of people appear as
their reflection in his thought. But the scene is _also_ a piece of
drama, it strikes out of the book with the strong relief of dramatic
action; which is evidently an advantage gained, seeing the importance
of the hour in the story, but which is an advantage that it could not
enjoy, one might have said.

The quality of the scene becomes clear if we imagine the story to be
told by Strether himself, narrating in the first person. Of the damage
that this would entail for the picture of his brooding mind I have
spoken already; but suppose the book to have taken the form of
autobiography, and suppose that Strether has brought the story up to
this point, where he sits beside little Bilham in Gloriani's garden.
He describes the deep and agitating effect of the scene upon him,
calling to him of the world he has missed; he tells what he thought
and felt; and then, he says, I broke out with the following tirade to
little Bilham--and we have the energetic outburst which Henry James
has put into his mouth. But is it not clear how the incident would be
weakened, so rendered? That speech, word for word as we have it, would
lose its unexpected and dramatic quality, because Strether, arriving
at it by narration, could not suddenly spring away from himself and
give the impression of the worn, intelligent, clear-sighted man
sitting there in the evening sun, strangely moved to unwonted
eloquence. His narration must have discounted the effect of his
outburst, leading us up to the very edge of it, describing how it
arose, explaining where it came from. He would be _subjective_, and
committed to remain so all the time.

Henry James, by his method, can secure this effect of drama, even
though his Strether is apparently in the position of a narrator
throughout. Strether's are the eyes, I said, and they are more so than
ever during this hour in the garden; he is the sentient creature in
the scene. But the author, who all through the story has been treating
Strether's consciousness as a play, as an action proceeding, can at
any moment use his talk almost as though the source from which it
springs were unknown to us from within. I remember that he himself, in
his critical preface to the book, calls attention to the way in which
a conversation between Strether and Maria Gostrey, near the beginning,
puts the reader in posses