“Anita!”
“I mean it.” She was quick and fierce. “Do you think it was a little thing for me to see that pearl of great price—oh, not Madala Grey! I grew to hate her almost, that new Madala Grey—but the gift within her, her great, blazing genius—flung away, trampled on——”
Miss Howe turned her head in slow denial.
“No, Anita! Not genius. Charm, if you like. Talent, as much as you please. But Madala Grey wasn’t a genius, and she knew it.”
Anita flung up her head.
“She will be when I’ve done with her. She will be when I’ve written the Life.”
“Ah, the poor child!” said Great-aunt startlingly.
Anita never heeded. She was wrapt away in some cold passion of her own, a passion that amazed me. I had always thought of her as what she looked, an ordered, steely woman, all brain and will; yet now of a sudden she revealed herself, a creature convulsed, writhing in flames. But they were cold flames. Cold fire, is there such a thing? Ice burns. There is phosphorus. There is the light of stars. I know what I mean if only I had the words. Star-fire—that’s it. She was like a dead star. She warmed no one, she only burned herself up.
It was the impression of a moment. When I looked again it was as if I had been withdrawn from a telescope. She was herself once more. The volcano had shrunk to a diamond twinkle, to a tiny, gesticulating creature with a needle tongue. It was bewildering: while I listened to her I was still thinking—‘Yes, but which is Anita? Diamond or star? What makes the glitter? Frost or flame?’
But that blonde woman in the shadows went off into noiseless laughter that woke the dragons and stirred Mr. Flood to an upward glance. Then he hunched himself closer against her knees, his chin low on his chest, so that his tiny beard and mouth and eyes were like triangles standing on their points. The pose gave him a glinting air of mockery and yet, somehow, you did not feel that he was amused. You only felt—‘Oh, he’s practised that at a looking-glass.’