|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: had wished to give it, and the march of occurrences was not so
ordered as to make up for what it lacked. He had begun on the
spot, for one of the quarterlies, a great last word on Vereker's
writings, and this exhaustive study, the only one that would have
counted, have existed, was to turn on the new light, to utter - oh,
so quietly! - the unimagined truth. It was in other words to trace
the figure in the carpet through every convolution, to reproduce it
in every tint. The result, according to my friend, would be the
greatest literary portrait ever painted, and what he asked of me
was just to be so good as not to trouble him with questions till he
should hang up his masterpiece before me. He did me the honour to
|
