“And that?” said Anita swiftly.
“Only Madala’s own account.”
“She never discussed her methods,” said Anita sharply.
“Just so! You’re not the only person who’s—pumped. I remember seeing her once surrounded, in her lion days. I remember her ingenuous explanations. She did her best to oblige them—‘Honestly, I don’t know. One just sits down and imagines.’ And then—‘That’s quite easy. But it’s awfully difficult writing it down.’ That’s the explanation, Nita. A deliberate, even unconscious self-exploitation is all nonsense. Madala’s not clever enough.”
“Not clever enough!”
“No. You’re much cleverer than she was. You have twice her brains. You can’t think, Anita, what brains you’ve got. You’ve got far too many to understand a simple person. I don’t agree, you know, with ‘genius.’ I can’t throw a word like that about so lightly. But as far as it went with Madala, it was the same sort of genius that makes a crocus push in the spring. Your theory—oh, it’s plausible, as Jasper says, but don’t you see that it destroys all the charm of her work? It’s the innocence of her knowledge, the simplicity of her attitude to her own insight that to me is moving. She touches pitch, yet her fingers are clean. It’s her view of her story that arrests one, not her story, not her facts, not her mere plot.”
“No, the plot is conventional, I’ll grant you that. She was always content with old bottles.”
“Yes, and when the new wine burst them and made a mess on the carpet, Madala was always so surprised and indignant.”
Mr. Flood giggled.
“Pained is the word, dear lady—surprised and pained. Do you remember when Eden Walls was banned?”