“Well, if I were Anita I should begin by showing Madala as a romantic—as the young romantic producing the most startlingly realistic book we’ve had for a decade. Indeed to me, you know, her development is marked by her books in the sharpest way. It’s the young, the curious, the observant Madala in _Eden Walls_. The whole book is a shout of discovery, of young, horrified discovery, of the ugliness of life. It’s as if she said—‘Listen! Listen! These things actually happen to some people. Isn’t it awful?’ She dwells on it. She insists on every detail. She can’t get away from it. And yet she can hardly believe it, that young Madala. But in _Ploughed Fields_ already the tone’s changing. It’s a pleasanter book, a more sophisticated book. It interests profoundly, but it’s careful not to upset one—an advance, of course. Yet I, you know, hear our Madala’s voice in it still, an uneasy voice—‘Hush! Hush! These things happen to most people. Pretend not to notice.’ And in the last book, in the pretty, impossible romance, there you have your realist full-fledged—‘Shut your eyes! Come away quickly! These things are happening to _me_!’” He leant back again, folding his arms and dropping his chin. And then, because Miss Howe was looking at him as if she were amused—“I tell you I know. I recognize the symptoms. I’m a realist myself. That’s why I write romantic poetry. Have to. It’s that or drugs. How else shall one get through life?” “Jasper!” said the blonde lady. But for once he didn’t turn to her. He shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t worry. Who’ll believe me?” The Baxter girl was breathless. “Oh, but I do. It’s a new Madala, of course. But I believe it explains her.” “But the facts of her life don’t agree,” began Miss Howe. “Ah, Anita’s got to make ’em,” said Mr. Flood languidly. “Isn’t that the art of biography?” But Anita was deadly serious. “You don’t begin far enough back. My spring-board is not—what is Madala? but—what is genius? How does it happen? Is it immaculate birth? or is it begotten of accident upon environment? That is to say—is it inspiration or is it experience? I speak of the divine fire, you understand, not of the capacity for resolving it into words or paint or stone. That’s craft, a very different thing. You say that Madala was not a genius in the big sense—yes, I’ll admit that even, for the argument’s sake—but even you will concede her the beginnings of it. So my difficulty is just the same. I’ve never believed in instinctive genius. Yet how can she, at twenty, have had the experience (that she had the craft is amazing enough) to cope with _Eden Walls_? Romantic curiosity isn’t enough explanation, Jasper! Look at her certainty of touch. Look at her detail. Look how she gets inside that woman’s mind. That’s the fascination of it. It’s such a document. Now how does she know it? That’s what intrigues me. Madala and a street woman! Where’s the connection? How does she get inside her? Because she does get inside her.”