The "sacrifice", the indispensable, unspeakable sacrifice, on the girl's part, is involved in her relation to Ralph as she now knows him, and the quintessential "drama" of it, so to speak, is by the same token involved inhis knowing heras she knows him, and as, above all, she is knownbyhim. There hovers before me a something-or-other in this, a finer twist still, a deeper depth or higher flight of the situation, which seems worth looking into, and which in fact already appears to open out a good bit before me as I consider it. Isn't there something, isn't there even much, in the idea that when once these two have arrived, so to speak, at their understanding, at their mutual disclosures, or at least, that is, at his disclosure and her avowal, he becomes capable of a sort of sublimity in presence, as who should say, of her own? so that there is a kind of struggle between them as to who shall give up most—if I may put it in such a way without excess of the kind of romanticism that I don't want; wanting as I do above all, constantly kept hold of and economised, never let go of nor perverted in the least, the unfailing presence, drawing in everything to itself, of that force of "tone" which makes the thing of the parenté of the "Screw". So much is true and absolute; but doesn't prevent that I am wanting to put my finger on the very centre of the point from which my young man's "liberation" is worked. What hovers before me at this pitch, as I just said, is theconcettothat, sincerely affected by her sublimity, he is moved to match it—and in all sincerity as I say—by offering to remain with her, as who should say, give up everythingforher—from the moment he thus takes in that she gives him up for what is to herself utterly nothing, nothing but the exaltation of sacrifice—in short what I see! I have it all, I possess it here, and now must give pause to this long outciphering. It seems to give me after all a fourth recurrence of the man of 1820, called back, as it were, by what takes place. I possess it, I hold it fast; simply noting the prime point in regard to my last Book. Rather good and fine, I think, to make it that as the man of 1820 is "called" (since I think I do definitely give him his re-intervention here, though probably at the cost of still keeping these down to three in number, and so running two of the others, as who should say, into one,) so the woman of 1910 is likewise called; so my fundamental idea that the solution of the solution comes about through Aurora's "coming out, coming over", takes effect as I had planned it. The penultimate book ends on the climax I have in mind, as the "Ambassador" Book ended and broke off with the two at the door of the House; and so the ultimate one puts Ralph, always in London, and after the lapse of the real six months or whatever, face to face with his friend of Book I, to whom exactly what was foreshadowed in that Book for my dénoûment had happened. Things, things for her consciousness, her imagination, her growing unrest, her own New York malaise, have happened tohertoo; just how we are to know about them giving me, however, a little knot rightly to untie. I hate its being a "little" knot, savouring so of the perfunctory and the abbreviated; yet how can I want it in the nature of things to do more than adequately balance with the dimensions, or whatever, of Book First? The question is how, with the right sort of beauty of effect, to work in together the Ambassador's re-participationandher own, or rather, better put, hers and the Ambassador's own; since I of course, under penalty of the last infamy, stick here still, as everywhere, to our knowing these things but through Ralph's knowing them. It's a bit awkward that I seem to want Aurora's arrival in London and her appeal to the Ambassador for assuagement of her literal climax of trouble, I seem to want that passage to precede my young man's reappearance, re-emergence, so to speak—and yet can't possibly have anything so artistically base. I want the "rescue", on this side of time, by Aurora, as the liberation,forrescue on the other side of time, has been by the girl of 1820; I want it to be, on our actual ground, by something that Auroradoes; I want his restoration and recovery to take place actually and literally through her having got into such a "psychic" state, passed through such a psychic evolution, over there, that she takes action at last, takes the very action that she sort of defied Ralph to make her take in that full, and would-be at least so rich, "scene" of the most preliminary order. What there took place essentially was, as he formulated it, that she would look at none but a man of, as it were, tremendous action and adventure, not being appealed to (however she might attenuate or sophisticate her arrangement of her case) by the "mere" person, the mere leader, of the intellectual life, the mere liver in a cultivated corner, that Ralph has admitted himself to be to her—with a frankness, an abjection, say, that his whole subsequent adventure represents his reaction against. The immense scope his reaction has found then, once he has got over into the "old world", this has developed to the point that no prodigious adventure of any such figure as she may have had in mind comes within millions of miles of the prodigy of his adventure; whereby my conceit is that all the while he is "having" this, all the while she, left to the aftersense of what has passed between them, gradually feels her "state of mind", state of feeling, state of fancy, say, state of nerves in fine, grow and grow (in a sort of way that is corresponding all the while to the stages of his experience) till the pitch of unsupportable anxiety and wonder is reached for her, and being able no longer to stand it, she comes out to London. I make her come to London through considerations, references or whatever, plausible enough; and I make her by the same token want to see the Ambassador—whom she approaches, after the very fashion of Ralph's approach six months or whenever, before, and as if he were almost, so to say, a father-confessor. All this is feasible and "amusing", rather beautiful to do being what I mean; only it must comeafterand by reference backward, so to call it—as I can only make the Ambassador precede her in these renewals, for Ralph, of contact and apprehension. It isn't so much making him aware of the Ambassador first, so to speak, that is the trouble, and making him then aware of Aurorabythat personage and what comes of reference on his part to the beautiful uneasy and inquiring creature of New York; it isn't so much the scene with that young woman herself then taking place: it isn't these that put their question to me, but the terms and conditions on and in which I have his Excellency and his young friend of the previous season confronted. What a blessing thus to find, accordingly, how the old gentle firmness of pressure, piously applied, doesn't fail to supply me. Our young friend is in the house again as he was in it in Book II—the only little hitch being that I didn't show him aslivingthere, for the Ambassador, in Book III. He goes to live there, goeswiththat escort to do so on the last page of the Book, but by that very fact to pass into—well everything that we have seen him in and which represents the rupture of continuity with the Ambassador's period. So in short, perfectly, I see that, for consummate reasons, he can't receive this visitor on that exhausted scene at all, but must have the case otherwise—have it in fact just as it comes to me now. The Ambassador, after his visit from Aurora (which we don't know about yet, don't know about till Ralph hashisknowledge of it from him,) goes then, walks then, the day and the season being fine and he walking with the largeness with which dear J. R. L. used to walk—he goes then, I say, to the place where he has last had sight of his so interestingly demented young man of said previous season: he goes there but to have the sensation, by which I mean of course the actual experience, of seeing the very conditions in which he then parted with him practically renewed. The last thing he had stood there on the pavement before the house to see was Ralph's going in with that last look at him and with the open door duly again closing on him. So accordingly the first thing he now sees is Ralph's coming out again with the door closing on him from behind and thefirstlook the young man addresses to the world of 1910 resting exactly upon the confidant of his former embroilment. I like that—like Ralph's coming straight out of everything we have been having, everything up to the very last sharp edge of it, straight back into this friend's hands. Well, how do I take up, that is how does Ralph take up, and how does the Ambassador, this fresh situation and relation? The Ambassador, after his passage with the so handsome and so distracted young woman from New York, may well have some doubt and some question as to how, and be in some predicament about it; but I grant at once that Ralph has emerged from all trouble and now is, for the whole situation, supreme master and controller.Heis "all right" at least, and here-connects, on the spot, with all the lucidity and authority we can desire of him. His distinguished friend has come, clearly, on a visit to him—and he embraces that as well as he embraces their not going back into the house. At the previous season, as I have called it, he wasn't yet living in the house, he was only visiting it from his hotel or his lodgings; yet it isn't to these, none the less, that I see him invite his caller to adjourn with him, but, under the happiest inspiration, straight into the Square itself, very pleasant now to sit in (I must rightly and neatly adjust together the times of the year) and in which, under its ancient form, by which I mean of course its earlier, he has been through the scène à faire of 1820. It strikes me as positively "pretty" that they go into the Square together on the leafy June afternoon and that there it is, while they sit down, that the Ambassador reports to him of the visit received at the Embassy from Aurora. He has those things totell—to tell to the young man who had those others to do the like with as presented in Book III; whereby it is very much he, or entirely he, who is the relator, reporter, exhibitor, with Ralph also for cross-questioner, as the Ambassador himself was on the other occasion—I myself having of course too my free hand for showing the elder man as really confessing to his genial bewilderment of interest. However, the extent to which I am possessed of this requires no dotting of "i's"; and the great point simply is that thus we get all we require, as a preliminary to the last pages of all of what has happened to or in, what has happened for and by, Aurora. I scarcely need state that the upshot or conclusion of the two men's talk is that Ralph must of course at once see that young woman; which is the understanding on which the Ambassador leaves him. But I am almost capable of wondering whether I had best give this meeting, this reunion of theirs, in the facts and in the flesh, as it were—so aloof do I feel from the possibility of a kind of graceless literality. I shall see, I shall make up my mind: it will come, in true rightness, itcancome but so, when I get in close nearness to it. I do seem to conceive that I can beautifully get all my needed value for final climax from taking it all out, or putting it all in, between the two men—especially after they have come out of the Square together for the Ambassador to go, and they stand on the opposite pavement, the bit round the Square, with the house over there in view. Ralph of course hastoldhis Excellency nothing; not a syllable of repetition of all that we've been having, of course, issues from him for his friend's illumination. He has only cross-questioned, only extracted everything about Aurora; only taken inhowhis triumph is complete and how that young woman has come down and round. It is thus a question then of his sending her a message, and of his sending it by the Ambassador for whom he sees her (justified thereto very vividly by the latter) simply and all so wonderingly wait. Yes, the message he sends is that he shall be glad to see her. He summons her to him—doesn't offer to go to her. He has said to his companion at first and for their going into the Square that he is not staying at the House, and that his lodgings are elsewhere. The Ambassador, taking the message, has the question, virtually: "She's to come then to you at your hotel?" On which, after an hesitation and resting his eyes a moment over on the house, Ralph says: "No, no. Over there." But I should say I needn't here and now draw this out, and that I have it all and more than all, were it not that I just want to note more emphatically that I provide for everything, provide against the need of any "small" scene with the young woman from New York as a sequence to this full passage with the Ambassador, and as a wind up to the whole thing, together with the balance of such a chapter against the preliminary Book First—I provide for everything, I say, by puttingintothisfinalebetween the two men in the Square, by making Ralph acquaint his visitor with, so to speak,allthe requisite meaning resident in the appeal, from their young woman, that his Excellency has called to report on. I said above that Ralph "tells" the Ambassador nothing—but only receives his own statement and cross-questions him on it; but that qualification refers only to what has been happening to R., in his prodigious alternate character, during the previous six months or whatever. Not a word about all that; but on the other hand every word required to enable us to dispense with another scene for the young woman from N.Y. On that subject Ralph is fully informing, and what I mean and want is that this action in him, holding his interlocutor extraordinarily interested, shall so suffice for our own interest and satisfaction, shall so vividly take the place of it, that we simply shan't in the least miss, but shall find ourselves admirably do without, any bringing "on" again of Aurora. The present and conclusive scene in the Square all sufficiently brings her on, all sufficiently prefigures Ralph's reunion, not to say union, with her, and in short acquits me of everything. A far more ingenious stroke, surely, and to be made more ministrant to effect and to the kind of note of the strange that I want than the comparatively platitudinous directduobetween the parties! He has only to give us in advance all that the duo must and will consist of in order to leave us just where, or at least justas, we want!
[1]The original version ofThe Sense of the Past, revised by the author in 1914 (see Preface,) broke off in the middle of the scene between Ralph Pendrel and the Ambassador (Book III). Having reached this point in the revision Henry James dictated the following notes before proceeding further.
[1]The original version ofThe Sense of the Past, revised by the author in 1914 (see Preface,) broke off in the middle of the scene between Ralph Pendrel and the Ambassador (Book III). Having reached this point in the revision Henry James dictated the following notes before proceeding further.