They do not describe and review and recapitulate this drama, nor does
the author. It is played before us, we see its actual movement.
The effect is found here and there in all well-made fiction, of
course. The undercutting, as I call it, of a flat impression is seen
wherever a turn of events is carefully prepared and deliberately
approached. But I do not know that anywhere, except in the later
novels of Henry James, a pictorial subject is thus handed over in its
entirety to the method of drama, so that the intervention of a seeing
eye and a recording hand, between the reader and the subject, is
practically avoided altogether. I take it as evident that unless the
presence of a seer and a recorder is made a value in itself,
contributing definitely to the effect of the subject, he is better
dispensed with and put out of the way; where other things are equal a
direct view of the matter in hand is the best. But it has been made
clear in the foregoing pages, I hope, that the uses of a narrator are
many and various; other things are _not_ equal where the subject asks
for no more than to be reflected and pictured. In that case the
narrator, standing in front of the story, is in a position to make the
most of it, all that can be made; and so he represents the great
principle of economy, and is a value in himself, and does contribute
to the effect.
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