Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/359

THE IVORY TOWER on, and give help thereby to the place-scheme; if I want Gray to arrive en plein Newport, as I do for immediate control of the assault of his impressions, it must be a matter of August rather than of June; and nothing is simpler than to shift. Let me indeed so far modify as to conceive that 15 or 16 months will be as workable as a Year—practically they will count as the period both short enough and long enough; and will bring me for Nine and Ten round to the Newport or whatever of August, and to the whatever else of some moment of beauty and harmony in the American autumn. Let me wind up on a kind of strong October or perhaps even better still—yes, better still—latish November, in other words admirable Indian Summer, note. That brings me round and makes the circle whole. Well then I don't seem to want a repetition of Newport—as if it were, poor old dear, the only place known to me in the country!—for the images that this last suggestion causes more or less to swarm. By the blessing of heaven I am possessed, sufficiently to say so, of Lenox, and Lenox for the autumn is much more characteristic too. What do I seem to see then?—as I don't at all want, or imagine myself wanting at the scratch, to make a local jump between Nine and Ten. These things come—I see them coming now. Of course it's perfectly conceivable, and entirely characteristic, that Mrs. Bradham should have a place at Lenox as well 345