Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/336

THE IVORY TOWER way, his sense of his situation here, of what it means, and of what he means, in it, through what takes place for him about it with Rosanna and with the Bradhams. It is by what he "says" to the Bradhams and to Rosanna (in the way, that is largely, of not saying) that I seem to see my values here as best got, and the presentation of their different states most vivified and dramatised. These are scenes, and the function of them to serve up for us exactly, and ever so lucidly, what I desire them to represent. If the greatest interest of them, of sorts, belongs to them in so far as they are "with" Rosanna, there are yet particular values that belong to the relation with Davey, and the three relations, at any rate, work the thing for me. They are perfectly different, on this lively ground, though the "point" involved is the same in each; and the having each of them to do it with should enable me to do it beautifully; I mean to squeeze all the dramatic sense from it. The great beauty is of course for the aspects with Rosanna, between whom and him everything passes and there is so much basis already in what has been between them without his "explaining", as I have called it, anything. Even without explanations—or all the more by reason of their very absence—there is so much of it all; of the question and the dramatic illumination. With Gussie Bradham—that aspect I needn't linger or insist on, here, so 322