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Show , "At this mcment," runs the passage of r 379, ' Carohne Spencer came out of the house bearing a coffee pot on a little tray. [ noticed that on her way from the door to the table she gave me a single quick vaguely appe~lu:g ?"lance. 1 wondered what it signified; I felt that It sigmfied a sort of half-frightened longing to know what, as a man of the world who had been in France, I thought of the Countess. It made me extremely uncomfortable. I could not tell her that the Countess was very possibly the runaway wife of a little hairdresse1•• I tried, suddenly, on the contrary, to show a high consideration for her." The "particular vision" registered on re-perusal reveals states of m1nd much more definite than these wonderings and longings and vague appeals. "Our hostess moreover at this moment came out of the house, bearing a coffee-pot and three cups on a neat little tray .. I took from her eyes, as she approached us, a bnef but Intense appeal-the mute expression as I felt, conveyed in the hardest little look she had 'yet addressed ?'e, of her longing to know what as a man of the world 111 general and of the French world in particular, I th.ought of these allied forces now so encamped on the stncken fie!~ of her life. I could only 'act', however, as they sa1d at Nor~h Verona, quite impenetrably- only make no answenng sign. I couldn't intimate, much less could I frankly utter, my inward sense o~ the Countess's probable past, with its measure of her VIrtue, value ~nd accomplishments, and of the limits of the consi,der~tiOn to which she could properly pretend. I could~ t g~ve m.y frien~ a hint of how I myself personally saw her mterestmg pensioner-whether as the runaway wife of a too-jealous hair-dresser or of a tooruorose past:r-cook, say; whether as a very small bour&"e01se, 1n fine, who had vitiated her case beyond patchmg up, or even some character of the nomadic sort, r8 less edifying still. I couldn't let in, by the jog of a ~hutter, as it were, a hard informing ray and then, washmg my hands of the business, turn my back for ever. I could on the contrary but save the situation, my own at least, for the moment, by pulling myself together with a master hand and appearing to ignore everything but that the dreadful person between us was a 'grande dame'." Anyone genuinely interested in "the how and the whence and the why these in tenser lights of experience come into bein~ and insist on shining", will find it a profitable exerCise to read and compare the old and the new versions of any of the novels or tales first published during the 'seventies or 'eighties. Such a reader will be qualified to de~ide for himself between the opinion of a bold yo~I.tg cnt1~ th~t "all the works have been subjected to a revtsiOn wh1ch 111 several cases, notably Daisy Miller and Four Meetings, amounts to their ruin " and their writer's confidence that" I shouldn't have br~athed upon the old catastrophes and accidents, the old wounds and mutilations and disfigurements wholly in vain .... I have .prayed that the finer air of the better form may suffiCiently seem to hang about them and gild them over -at least for readers, however few at all curious of questions of air and form." ' VI Explanatory prefaces and elaborate revisions short stories and long memories, were far from being the complete tale ofl!te~ary labour during the last eight years of Henry James s hfe. A new era for English drama was prophesied in 1907. Led by Miss Horniman, advocates of the repertory system were marching forward capturing one by one the intellectual centres of the pr~ vinces. In London, repertory seasons were announced !9 |