He was a sensitive youth, quiet and shy; he suffered from spinal trouble, and liked to sit quietly in drawing-rooms and listen to other people talk. Then he would go apart for long periods, and reflect upon what he had heard, and weave it into stories. He was grateful to his friends if they would tell him their troubles, because that provided him with copy; but he never told anyone his own troubles, and his friends lost sight of the possibility that anything might ever have happened to him personally. Edmund Gosse, who became his intimate, tells how in his old age James, walking up and down in a garden one evening, was suddenly moved to open his heart. Looking up at a light in the house, he was reminded of a scene long, long ago, when he had stood in a street one rainy night, looking up thus to a lighted window, expecting to see a face, but the face had not come. That was all of the story; but Mr. Gosse was thrilled, even appalled. Actually, once upon a time, something had happened to the Master! It would perhaps not be indelicate of us to feel warranted in assuming that this something had to do with the relation of the sexes. We note that this relation is, like everything else in the Henry James world, fastidious, reserved, and governed by the aesthetic sensibilities. These people do not love, they talk about loving; and as years pass, and the later manner grows, their talk comes more and more to deal with the condition of having been loved. In “Daisy Miller,” an early story which made the young author famous, we see an innocent American girl in Rome, who to her horror receives an improper advance from a young Italian. In “Madame de Mauves” we see an American lady, unhappily married to a Frenchman in Paris, tempted by passion for a true young American. But when we come to the great long novels with the great long sentences of the “third manner,” we find ourselves dealing with the fact that once upon a time, long, long ago, a man and a woman committed an impropriety, and now somebody else is slowly finding out about it, to the general horror and dismay. Thus “The Golden Bowl,” seven hundred and eighty-nine closely printed pages, dealing with the mental and emotional reactions of a woman who has an intimate woman friend, and discovers that her husband has at some past period been the lover of this friend. Or “What Maisie Knew,” in which we discover an ancient intrigue through the eyes of the little daughter of the intriguing woman. Perhaps you think you know what obscenity is, but you get a new revelation of its possibilities when you proceed through the mind of a child to pick up hints and allusions of the elders, and piece them into a pattern of fornication.