Mr. Flood’s vanity was in his cheeks while she rattled on.
“Darling Jasper, I thought better of you! Can’t you see the whole thing’s a skit? Giving the jampot public what they wanted! Why, it’s been out a year and they’re sucking the spoon still. It’s the resting-place! Ask the libraries! Oh, can’t you see?”
“If it is parody,” said Mr. Flood slowly, “then, I admit, it’s unique.”
“What else? You’ll not deny humour to her?”
“I do!” the blonde lady nodded her head. “Once a woman is in love she’s quite hopeless.”
“I don’t see how parody could be in question,” Anita broke in. “Anybody reading the book carefully must see that she’s in earnest. That’s the tragedy of it.”
“The literary tragedy?”
“Not only literary. The psychological value is enormous. It’s not art, it’s record. It’s photography. That happened. That happened, tragically, to Madala. Oh, not the trimmings, of course, not the happy-ever-after. But to me it’s perfectly clear that that lapse into Family Herald romance has had its equivalent in Madala’s own life. I’ve always felt a certain weakness in her character, you know—a certain sentimentalism.”
“In the author of Eden Walls?” said Miss Howe contemptuously.
“No, dear lady! But in the author of The Resting-place.” Mr. Flood had recovered himself.