“Not to me.” Anita held her head high. “I shall pay. And interest too.”
“Oh, the Life! Are you really going to attempt a Life?” Miss Howe recovered herself with a laugh, while Mr. Flood repeated curiously—
“Yes, but then what were you after, Anita? What do you stand to gain?”
“Reflected glory,” came from behind him.
She turned as if she had been stung.
“Reflected? Let her keep it! Reflected? Am I never to have anything of my own? Oh, wait!”
“You can’t get much of yourself into a life of Madala Grey though. You’ve too much sense of style for that,” Mr. Flood insisted. “We both hate a biographer who ‘I says, says I.’”
“Oh, it shall be all Madala Grey. I promise you that,” she said with her thin smile.
“Humph! It’s a notion.” Miss Howe was really interested, I could see—yet with a flush on her cheek still. “It’s your sort of work too, Anita! You’re—happier—in critical work.”
“Oh, don’t hedge. Don’t be delicate with me. I can’t create, that’s what you mean. Do you think that’s news to me? Is there a critic who has failed to make it clear to me? I can record—but I can’t create. Good! I can’t create. I can’t do what she did—what you do, Jasper—what even Beryl here does. But——” she paused an instant, “you should be afraid of me for all that. I can pry. Little, nasty, mean word, isn’t it? It’s me!”