"
"Neither can I," she answered.
"You ought to have confessed you had written it, or have said nothing
about it," I told her, frankly.
"Yes," she assented. "Not doing so was a kind of falsehood. But
neither course occurred to me." And then she explained: "I never see
the meaning of what I write till the light of public opinion is turned
upon it, or some cold critic comes and damps my enthusiasm. When a
subject possesses me, and shapes itself into verse, it boils in my
brain, and my pen is the only way of escape for it, the one
safety-valve I have to ease the pressure. And I can't judge of its
merits myself for long enough after it _is_ written, because the
boiling begins again, you see, whenever I read it, and then there is
such a steam of feeling I cannot see to think. For the verses, however
poor they appear to you, contain for me the whole poem as I have it in
my inner consciousness. It is beautiful as it exists there, but the
power of expression is lacking. If only I could make you feel it as I
do, I should be the greatest poet alive."
It was a trick of Ideala's to miss the true import of a thing--often an
act of her own--until the occasion had passed, or to see it strangely
distorted, as she frequently did at this time--though that gradually
ceased altogether as she grew older; but it was this peculiarity, so
strongly marked in her, which first helped me to comprehend a curious
trait there is in the moral nature of men and women while it is still
in process of development.
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