“You know as well as I do,” she laughed, “else you wouldn’t have asked that question. They aren’t in the world at all. They’re in you—when you went so angry.”
“D’you mean a dull purplish patch, like port-wine mixed with ink?” I said.
“I’ve never seen ink or port-wine, but the colours aren’t mixed. They are separate—all separate.”
“Do you mean black streaks and jags across the purple?”
She nodded. “Yes—if they are like this,” and zigzagged her finger again, “but it’s more red than purple—that bad colour.”
“And what are the colours at the top of the—whatever you see?”
Slowly she leaned forward and traced on the rug the figure of the Egg itself.
“I see them so,” she said, pointing with a grass stem, “white, green, yellow, red, purple, and when people are angry or bad, black across the red—as you were just now.”
“Who told you anything about it—in the beginning?” I demanded.
“About the colours? No one. I used to ask what colours were when I was little—in table-covers and curtains and carpets, you see—because some colours hurt me and some made me happy. People told me; and when I got older that was how I saw people.” Again she traced the outline of the Egg which it is given to very few of us to see.