“The image of the "presence," whatever it was, waiting there for him to go--this image had not yet been so concrete for his nerves as when he stopped short of the point at which certainty would have come to him. For, with all his resolution, or more exactly with all his dread, he did stop short--he hung back from really seeing. The risk was too great and his fear too definite: it took at this moment an awful specific form.”

American-British author

Henry James was an American-British author, and a major figure in the shift from literary realism to literary modernism. He lived from 1843 to 1916. He is widely read as one of the leading novelists in English, known for fiction that sits between the detailed social world of realism and the more inward concerns of modern writing. He was the son of theologian Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.