am not drawing upon memory when I imagine
Edith waking to a room strewn with clothes, papers, cosmetics, letters
and a few books, the smell of Violettes de Parme and stale tobacco. The
sunlight beating in through broken blinds, and broken blinds keeping out
the sun until Edith can compel herself to attend to another day. Yet the
vision does not give me much pain. I think of her as an artist without
the slightest artistic power."

"The artistic temperament--" began Appleplex.

"No, not that." Eeldrop snatched away the opportunity. "I mean that what
holds the artist together is the work which he does; separate him from
his work and he either disintegrates or solidifies. There is no interest
in the artist apart from his work. And there are, as you said, those
people who provide material for the artist. Now Edith's poem 'To Atthis'
proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that she is not an artist. On the
other hand I have often thought of her, as I thought this evening, as
presenting possibilities for poetic purposes. But the people who can
be material for art must have in them something unconscious, something
which they do not fully realise or understand. Edith, in spite of what
is called her impenetrable mask, presents herself too well. I cannot use
her; she uses herself too fully. Partly for the same reason I think,
she fails to be an artist: she does not live at all upon instinct.
The artist is part of him a drifter, at the mercy of impressions, and
another part of him allows this to happen for the sake of making use of
the unhappy creature. But in Edith the division is merely the rational,
the cold and detached part of the artist, itself divided. Her material,
her experience that is, is already a mental product, already digested by
reason. Hence Edith (I only at this moment arrive at understanding)
is really the most orderly person in existence, and the most rational.
Nothing ever happens to her; everything that happens is her own doing."

"And hence also," continued Appleplex, catching up the thread, "Edith
is the least detached of all persons, since to be detached is to be
detached from one's self, to stand by and criticise coldly one's own
passions and vicissitudes. But in Edith the critic is coaching the
combatant."

"Edith is not unhappy."

"She is dissatisfied, perhaps."

"But again I say, she is not tragic: she is too rational. And in
her career there is no progression, no decline or degeneration. Her
condit