The expression of her state and that of one's intimate relation to it might therefore well need to be discreet and ingenious a reflexion that fortunately grew and grew, however, in proportion as I focussed my image-roundabout which, as it persisted, I repeat, the interesting possibilities and the attaching wonderments, not to say the insoluble mysteries, thickened apace. Yes then, the case prescribed for its central figure a sick young woman, at the whole course of whose disintegration and the whole ordeal of whose consciousness one would have quite honestly to assist. It involved, to begin with, the placing in the strongest light a person infirm and ill-a case sure to prove difficult and to require (vi) much handling though giving perhaps, with other matters, one of those chances for good taste, possibly even for the play of the very best in the world, that are not only always to be invoked and cultivated, but that are absolutely to be jumped at from the moment they make a sign. It stood there with secrets and compartments, with possible treacheries and traps it might have a great deal to give, but would probably ask for equal services in return, and would collect this debt to the last shilling. It was formed, I judged, to make the wary adventurer walk round and round it-it had in fact a charm that invited and mystified alike that attention not being somehow what one thought of as a "frank" subject, after the fashion of some, with its elements well in view and its whole character in its face. These things, I had from the first felt, would require much working-out that indeed was the case with most things worth working at all yet there are subjects and subjects, and this one seemed particularly to bristle. The image so figured would be, at best, but half the matter the rest would be all the picture of the struggle involved, the adventure brought about, the gain recorded or the loss incurred, the precious experience somehow compassed. Long had I turned it over, standing off from it, yet coming back to it convinced of what might be done with it, yet seeing the theme as formidable. The idea, reduced to its essence, is that a of young person conscious of a great capacity for life, but early stricken and doomed, condemned to die under short respite, while also enamoured of the world aware moreover of the condemnation and passionately desiring to "put in" before extinction as many of the finer vibrations as possible, and so achieve, however briefly and brokenly, the sense of having lived. "The Wings of the Dove," published in 1902, represents to my memory a very old-if I shouldn't perhaps rather say a very young-motive I can scarce remember the time when the situation on which this long-drawn fiction mainly rests was not vividly present to me. (5) The New York Edition's spaces before "n't" (in contractions pronounced as two syllables) have been removed in this etext. (4) Proofreading errors (?) in the 1909 edition are indicated thus. Then paragraphs will be ended with hard returns and HTML tags, (capital P enclosed in angle-brackets). (3) To avoid the insertion of hard returns at the end of every line (which makes searching across line-breaks in downloaded files difficult), download with the HTML option, not the TXT option. Italics and accent marks have been removed from foreign words. (2) Italics for emphasis indicated by upper case, by lower case for the word _I_. Notes: (1) Numbers in parentheses indicate the beginning of each page in the New York Edition of 1909. January 24, 2000, at the suggestion of John Lavagnino. Of Gert Buelens of Universiteit Gent ManyĬorrections were made on June 6, 1999. This etext was proofread by Sarah Koch and by students Henry James scholar's Guide to Web Sites"
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