Henry James on Edith Whartons: Belated Souls

Within Henry James' essay he writes about creating believable characters, how important it is to have the readers cling to them so that they can put themselves inside the story. In Edith Wharton's Belated Souls there isn't any characters that seems too out there for one too connect with. We can all understand being in a relationship, friendship or romantic, that becomes repetitive and boring persay, then when someone new and exciting comes along they grab our attention, it's human nature. Even the very setting is realistic, Wharton doesn't add anything extreme enough to push the reader out of the story and question where the character was coming from; each one of her characters has a purpose, a reason for what they say or do she doesn't add random people in the story.
Wharton's ending isn't really the "fairy tale" ending either,to the point that Lydia leaves her boring husband to travel the world and ends up getting married to Gannet it is, but there is another part of it that seems different on how they come to the idea of getting married. It's almost as if there is a part of them that hates the very idea of getting married espically Lydia, except she finds herself coming back to marry instead of being alone. James talks about the ending shouldn't be as "mechanical" as most of them have been instead you should get something out of it. The reader questions almost why she goes back, she hates the idea of marriage and almost everything it stands for yet she chooses it over trying to find love again. I know it sounds like I'm contradicting myself from the first paragraph to this one but Wharton still doesn't bump the reader out instead she makes them wonder why they wouldn't choose the same path that Lydia does. I think that's really what James was saying about the ending and how it should have a point not just a finsih. With hers makes the reader examin themselves and their own ideas.
Also in Souls Belated there's a main storyline of how these two run away together only to become the very thing they had once mocked, but there's more to the novel then that. She also introduces at the hotel a couple, The Lintons, that are in the same lie and predictament that they find themselves in; but Warton also makes sure that there are a few couples that stand for everything that Lydia hates and yet she sides with them. It shows a very different part of Lydia and Gannetts character that wasn't available in the begining and maybe even starts to show them changing. It gives the novel more than just the blunt storyline, adding the color that Henry James talks about on pg 564 in The Art of Fiction.