Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/285

THE IVORY TOWER equal to the beauty of the donnée itself, that ever was.

However, what the devil are, exactly, the little fundamentals in the past? Fix them, focus them hard; they need only be perfectly conceivable, but they must be of the most lucid sharpness. I want to have it that for Gray, and essentially for Rosanna, it's a renewal of an early, almost, or even quite positively, childish beginning; and for Gray it's the same with Horton Vint—the impression of Horton already existing in him, a very strong and "dazzled" one, made in the quite young time, though in a short compass of days, weeks, possibly months, or whatever, and having lasted on (always for Gray) after a fashion that makes virtually a sort of relation already established, small as it ostensibly is. Such his relation with Rosanna, such his relation with Horton—but for his relation with Cissy? Do I want that to be also a renewal, the residuum of an old impression, or a fresh thing altogether? What strikes me prima facie is that it's better to have two such pre-established origins for the affair than three; the only question is does that sort of connection more complicate or more simplify for that with Cissy? It more simplifies if I see myself wanting to give, by my plan, the full effect of a revolution in her, a revolution marked the more by the germ of the relation being thrown back, marked the more, that is, in the sense of 271