with them; they pass you in the street, they stop and speak to you, you know how they are dressed, you watch the colour of their eyes.  When I think of “A Portrait of a Lady,” with its marvellous crowd of well-dressed people, it comes back to me precisely as an accurate memory of a fashionable soiree—­the staircase with its ascending figures, the hostess smiling, the host at a little distance with his back turned; some one calls him.  He turns; I can see his white kid gloves; the air is as sugar with the odour of the gardenias; there is brilliant light here; there is shadow in the further rooms; the women’s feet pass to and fro beneath the stiff skirts; I call for my hat and coat; I light a cigar; I stroll up Piccadilly ... a very pleasant evening; I have seen a good many people I knew; I have observed an attitude, and an earnestness of manner that proved that a heart was beating.

Mr. James might say, “If I have done this, I have done a great deal,” and I would answer, “No doubt you are a man of great talent, great cultivation and not at all of the common herd; I place you in the very front rank, not only of novelists but of men of letters.”

I have read nothing of Henry James’s that did suggest the manner of a scholar; but why should a scholar limit himself to empty and endless sentimentalities?  I will not taunt him with any of the old taunts—­why does he not write complicated stories?  Why does he not complete his stories?  Let all this be waived.  I will ask him only why he always avoids decisive action?  Why does a woman never say “I will”?  Why does a woman never leave the house with her lover?  Why does a man never kill a man?  Why does a man never kill himself?  Why is nothing ever accomplished?  In real life murder, adultery, and suicide are of common occurrence; but Mr. James’s people live in a calm, sad, and very polite twilight of volition.  Suicide or adultery has happened before the story begins, suicide or adultery happens some years hence, when the characters have left the stage, but bang in front of the reader nothing happens.  The suppression or maintenance of story in a novel is a matter of personal taste; some prefer character-drawing to adventures, some adventures to character-drawing; that you cannot have both at once I take to be a self-evident proposition; so when Mr. Lang says, “I like adventures,” I say, “Oh, do you?” as I might to a man who says “I like sherry,” and no doubt when I say I like character-drawing, Mr. Lang says, “Oh, do you?” as he might to a man who says, “I like port.”  But Mr. James and I are agreed on essentials, we prefer character-drawing to adventures.  One, two, or even three determining actions are not antagonistic to character-drawing, the practice of Balzac, and Flaubert, and Thackeray prove that.  Is Mr. James of the same mind as the poet Verlaine—­

    “La nuance, pas la couleur,
    Seulement la nuance,
      . . . . 
    Tout le reste est litterature.”