There glimmers and then floats shyly back to me from afar, the
sense of something like _this_, a bit difficult to put, though
entirely expressible with patience, and as I catch hold of the tip
of the tail of it yet again strikes me as adding to my action but
another admirable twist.
He continually sees himself catching by the tip of the tail the things
that solve his difficulties. And what tiny little animals he sometimes
manages to catch by the tip of the tail in some of his trances of
inspiration! Thus, at one point, he breaks off excitedly about his hero
with:--
As to which, however, on consideration don't I see myself catch a
bright betterment by not at all making him use a latch-key?... No,
no--no latch-key--but a rat-tat-tat, on his own part, at the big
brass knocker.
As the writer searches for the critical action or gesture which is to
betray the "abnormalism" of his hero to the 1820 world in which he
moves, he cries to himself:--
Find it, find it; get it right, and it will be the making of the
story.