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 come _after_ and 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 Aurora _by_ that 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 as _living_ there, for the Ambassador, in Book III. He goes to live there, goes _with_ that 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 has _his_ knowledge 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 the _first_ look 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