into talk of an artist's amorous design." But the design was thus mapped out with the clear understanding that at a later stage and at closer quarters the subject might grow away from the plan. "In the intimacy of composition pre-noted proportions and arrangements do most uncommonly insist on making themselves different by shifts and variations, always improving, which impose themselves as one goes and keep the door open always to something more right and _more_ related. It is subject to that constant possibility, all the while, that one does pre-note and tentatively sketch."[1] The preliminary sketch was seldom consulted after the novel began to take permanent shape, but the same method of "talking out" was resorted to at difficult points of the narrative as it progressed, always for the sake of testing in advance the values of the persons involved in a given situation, so that their creator should ensure their right action both for the development of the drama and the truth of their relations to each other. The knowledge of all the conscious motives and concealments of his creatures, gained by unwearied observation of their attitudes behind the scenes, enabled Henry James to exhibit them with a final confidence that dispensed with explanations. Among certain stumbling blocks in the path of the perfect comprehension of his readers is their uneasy doubt of the sincerity of the conversational encounters recorded. Most novelists provide some clue to help their readers to distinguish truth from falsehood, and in the theatre, although husbands and wives may be deceived by lies, the audience is usually privy to the plot. But a study of the Notes to _The Ivory Tower_ will make it clear that between the people created by Henry James lying is as frequent as among mortals and not any easier to detect.