Everest had referred to the flat before. In all his letters there had been the same eager, impatient note: he wanted her, and whether she chose to marry him or not she was to join him in London. He would take a flat, and as soon as it was ready he hoped she would come, as he could not go on living without her. He left everything in her hands. If she would like him to come down, with a special licence in his pocket-book, and marry her from the Rectory, he would do that, if not, she must come to him. He would prefer to write to her father about their engagement.... Might he do that? Whatever she decided, she was to remember he could not exist without her.... Several letters of this sort had reached her from Scotland, and had carried to her heart the extreme of happiness. She had not answered very definitely. She did not wish to curtail his time in Scotland by fixing dates herself. When he was back in town some wish of his would develop itself, and she would follow that.
The same afternoon she spent in her room. She locked herself in and then got out all her paintings, and went slowly over them in review.
She knew they were very good. Everest, the only person who had seen them, had said so, but that would have made no difference to her. She would not have believed it unless her own intuitive knowledge had told her so. Sometimes she had done bad work, but she had known it instantly, and destroyed it, as relentlessly as the all-wise animals destroy their ill-made or imperfect offspring. All that had survived was fit to live, and she sat in the centre of her pictures, looking from one to the other in a glow of delight.
Genius comes into the world not to learn, but to teach, and that is what the commonplace mind cannot grasp.
It will insist that everything must be taught, forgetting that at some time there could not have been any teacher. The question: Which came first, the hen or the egg? might well be asked of those people.... Which came first: the teacher or the taught?
As a matter of fact, genius knows no teacher but the divine force within that guides, directs, accomplishes all.
And Regina, leaning rocking on her bedroom chair, in the middle of the sheets of white paper that she had converted into living, joy-giving things, her slender hands clasped round her knees, knew that, whatever happened, she need never starve, never be dependent on anyone, never ask anything from anyone, as long as her fingers kept their cunning and her eyes their sight. As she sat there, the thought suddenly darted into her mind that it was Saturday, and unless she wrote to Everest before the London post left he could not have her acknowledgment of the brooch until Monday.
She sprang up, found her writing materials, and wrote.
It was only a few paces down the road to a letter-box, and, knowing it could not take her more than a second or two to reach it, she did not stay to lock up her work, as usual.
She ran down the stairs without her hat, and across the garden, to the highroad. The letter-box had been cleared when she reached it, but she knew she could overtake the old postman and get to the post office before he arrived, or give him the letter on the road. She went on with flying feet, but she had to traverse the whole distance to the village post before she came up with him. She saw him put the precious missive in his bag, then she turned homeward, eager to get back to her pictures.