after him, my father returned to the attack.

"Yes, Victor," he said in a friendly way, as if a happy solution of
my difficulties had just occurred to him, "why don't you make up
something quite orthodox and keep your own opinions out of it?"

I sighed and took half a glass of claret to fortify me. I saw I was
in for propounding my views upon genius, and I did not feel up to
it.

I could have avoided the argument, doubtless, by seeming to assent,
by promising to "make up something," and saved myself a number of
words.

But there is a strong impulse in me to revolt against allowing
myself to seem to accept a false statement or opinion that I do not
really hold.

And I pulled myself together with an effort.

"I don't think you understand in the least my view of a writer and
his writings," I said. "It is not a voluntary thing, led up to by
pre-determination. There can be no question of making up. I never
try to write nor to think. I do not invoke my own ideas. They spring
into being of themselves, quite unsought. And, in a measure, they
are uncontrollable."

My father was staring at me in silence.

"Eh?" he said merely as I paused.