“Well, I was going to say, it’s easy enough to end a book, but have you ever got to the beginning? I never have. One steps backward, and backward again——”
“I know,” cried the Baxter girl. “Till you get tired of it at last and begin writing from where you are, but you never really get your foot on the starting-point, on the spring-board, as you might say.”
“That’s it. Yes, Jasper, I’ve got material up my sleeve, but frankly, I don’t know how to place it. I don’t know where to begin. The facts of her life, her conversation, her literary work, her letters—I go on adding to my material till I am overwhelmed with all that I have got to say about her. But I don’t want to begin with facts. Facts are well enough, but think how one can twist them! I want the woman behind the facts. I want the answer to the question that is the cause of a biography such as mine is to be—the question—‘What was Madala Grey?’ Not who, mark you, but further back, deeper into herself—‘What was Madala Grey?’”
“Why, a genius,” said the Baxter girl glibly.
Anita neither assented nor dissented.
“Ah—” she said, frowning, “but that’s not the beginning either. At once we take our step backward again—‘What is genius?’”
“Isn’t talent good enough?” said Mr. Flood acidly.
“But does one mean talent?” She was still frowning. “Everyone’s got talent. I’m sick of talent. But she—she mayn’t be a great one—how she’d have laughed at being called a great one!—but she makes her dolls live. And isn’t that the blood-link between the greatest gods and the littlest gods? Life-givers? Life-makers? Oh, I only speak for myself; but she made her book-world real to me, therefore for me she had genius. Whether or not I convince you is the test of whether my life-work, my Life of her—fails or succeeds.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t trust it to Madala?” said Miss Howe softly.
“Trust what?”