Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/362

THE IVORY TOWER at any rate for the moment I seem to see that; my actual point being, however, that Cissy is posited at Lenox, that the Book "opens" with her, and that it is in the sense I mean "her" Book. She is there waiting as it were on what Horton does, so far as I allow her intelligence of this; and it is there that Gray finds her on his going on to Lenox whether under constraint (by what has gone before) of a visit to the Bradhams, a stay of some days with them, or under the interest of a conceivable stay with Rosanna; a sort of thing that I represent, or at any rate "posit", as perfectly in the line of Rosanna's present freedom and attributes. Would I rather have him with Rosanna and "going over" to the Bradhams? would I rather have him with the Bradhams and going over to Rosanna?—or would I rather have him at neither place and staying by himself at an hotel, which seems to leave me the right margin? There has been no staying up to this point for him with either party, and I have as free a hand as could be. With which there glimmer upon me advantages—oh yes—in placing him in his own independence; especially for Book 10: in short it seems to come. Don't I see Cissy as having obtained from Gussie Bradham that Horton shall be invited—which fact in itself I here provisionally throw off as giving me perhaps a sort of starting value.