Other early plays had been converted into novels or tales and so published. One of these, written originally for Miss Ellen Terry but never produced by her, had appeared as an incongruous companion to _The Turn of the Screw_ in the volume entitled _The Two Magics._ A few attentive readers had seen the dramatic possibilities of _Covering End_, and when it was suggested to Henry James that he should convert it into a three-act comedy for production by Mr. Forbes Robertson (as he was then) and Miss Gertrude Elliot, he willingly consented. Flying under a new flag, as _The High Bid_, the play was produced in London in February, 1909, but only for a series of matinées, the prodigious success of _The Passing of the Third Floor Back_ precluding the possibility of an evening for any other production under the same management. Under the inspiration of the repertory movement, other material was re-cast for acting. _The Other House_ was re-dictated as a tragedy. _Owen Wingrave_ became _The Saloon_, a one-act play produced by Miss Gertrude Kingston in 1910. Finally an entirely new three-act comedy, _The Outcry_, was written round the highly topical subject of the sale of art treasures to rich Americans. It was not produced during Henry James's life. At the time when it should have been rehearsed he was ill and the production was postponed. On his recovery, he went to the United States for a year, and when he came back the day of repertory performances had died in a fresh night of stars. When _The Outcry_ was given by the Stage Society in 1917, it was evident that the actors were embarrassed by their lines, for by 1909, when the play was written, the men and women of Henry James could talk only in the manner of their creator. His own speech, assisted by the practice of dictating, had by that time become so inveterately characteristic that his questions to a railway clerk about a ticket or to a fishmonger about a lobster, might easily be recognized as coined in the same mint as his addresses to the Academic Committee of the Royal Society of Literature. Apart from this difficulty of enunciating the lines, _The Outcry_ has all the advantages over the earlier plays. The characters are real and they act from adequate motives. The solution of the presented problem, which requires, like most of the author's solutions, a change of heart, is worked out with admirable art, without any use of the mechanical shifts and stage properties needed in _The Reprobate._ It is not very difficult to believe that if Henry James had been encouraged twenty years earlier to go on writing plays he might have made a name as a dramatist, but the faithful may be forgiven for rejoicing that the playwright was sacrificed to the novelist and critic. VII