"The first Circe lived even before the Pictish princesses," Basil answered, quieting down, though he was still very flushed. "But she's had a good many descendants—one or two at least in each generation of women born in every country. Not that you—I mean the new heroine—will be one of them really."
"What did Circe do?" I hurried on.
"Do? She was an exceptionally attractive woman. She had a special kind of magnetism that nobody could resist. She amused herself by turning all the men she knew—there were quite a lot of them—into animals of different sorts."
"I think it would have been cleverer and more attractive of her if she had turned animals into men," said I.
"That's what my heroine can do," Basil explained. "She's a kind of miniature baby Circe, for her red hair and general get up, and her curious power of upsetting people and their plans from the first minute they see her. But—my heroine wouldn't and couldn't turn her victims into beasts. She makes them want to transform themselves into something very extra special in the way of manliness."
"Why do you call her your heroine with an emphasis?" I wanted to know. "Isn't she your sister's heroine, too?"
"No. My sister doesn't see her as a heroine for a novel. And that's why I say the book we started out to write won't materialize. No author can write a story he or she doesn't take a strong interest in."
"That's where my writing is easier," I said. "I just put down all the things exactly as they happen, and as I see and think about them. So there's no heroine—and no hero—and no story."
"Yes, that is simpler," he agreed. "That's the way the Great Author writes His book. Only all His characters are heroes and heroines in the stories of their own lives."
As we talked, the moon went down in the west. The sky was a pale lilac, like a great concave mirror reflecting the heather. Then it darkened to a deeper purple, and made my thoughts feel like pansies, as they blossomed in my mind. We fell into silence. But Mrs. James said afterward that was because we were hungry and didn't realize what was the matter with us. Perhaps she was right, but it didn't seem so prosaic at the time.