one other than the brother, who is there for the second sister and whom he should perhaps do well to find alone in the room when he is introduced, waiting there for the others, the objects of his call, and constituting Ralph's immediate impression. It is to _them_, say, that the first sister enters--so indefeasibly and luminously, as it were, do I see my procedure ruled by the drama, the quasi-scenic movement, or essential march and logic and consistency, at any rate. However, I am not pretending in these words, in this rough scenario, to go into any but the most provisional and general particulars. What I want is that my young man should inevitably and naturally _dazzle_, and become aware of it, by the very force of his feeling the distinction and privilege of the prodigious element that has launched him. The others don't in the least know what it is in him, but what I want to make ressortir from it is that he "does" the other fellow, his ancient prototype, the expected cousin from America, with no end of gentility etc. There must be at the same time, of course I see, enormous foreshortenings, great compression and presentation of picture: I want something of this sort to show before the second daughter turns up. Of course such questions as whether it was of the period that the elder one, bred as girls of that time were bred, would "come down" to a couple of "gentlemen visitors" alone, and as by a kind of anticipation of our current modernity--of course such a detail as that is a perfectly easy thing to handle and make right. At the same time withal, in respect to what I said just above about the scenic, let me keep before me how the very essence of all this is to stick as fast as possible to the precedent of the "Screw", in which foreshortening abounded and I didn't, and couldn't, at all hand my subject over to the scenic. The present is of course a much larger and more complicated affair, lending itself much more to the scenic, even in a manner insisting on it a little, or a good bit; but I must guard, guard and all the while intensely guard, myself, none the less--or I shall sprawl out over ever so much more ground than I shall want, or at all need, for my best effect, to cover. If I may but look it well in the face that the thing can only afford in a very minor degree, not in the least in a preponderant one, to express itself scenically, it takes very little further thinking to see how vital that is, and that the particular effect I want most to catch, that of the crescendo of the malaise, really demands and depends upon the non-scenic for its full triumph. I grasp this entirely; I see how "narrative representation" most permits, most effectively prepares and accompanies, my turning of my present screw, and what a part picture and image and evoked aspect and sense can play for me in that connection.