The Light That Failed .........................................................................................................................................1

Rudyard Kipling......................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I .............................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER II ............................................................................................................................................7

CHAPTER III........................................................................................................................................13

CHAPTER IV........................................................................................................................................19

CHAPTER V.........................................................................................................................................27

CHAPTER VI........................................................................................................................................34

CHAPTER VII .......................................................................................................................................43

CHAPTER VIII.....................................................................................................................................55

CHAPTER IX........................................................................................................................................69

CHAPTER X.........................................................................................................................................78

CHAPTER XI........................................................................................................................................84

CHAPTER XII .......................................................................................................................................90

CHAPTER XIII.....................................................................................................................................95

CHAPTER XIV...................................................................................................................................106

CHAPTER XV....................................................................................................................................123

'WHAT do you think she'd do if she caught us? We oughtn't to have it, you know,' said Maisie.

'Beat me, and lock you up in your bedroom,' Dick answered, without hesitation. 'Have you got the cartridges?'

"Yes; they're in my pocket, but they are joggling horribly. Do pinfire cartridges go off of their own accord?'

"I'm not afraid.' Maisie strode forward swiftly, a hand in her pocket and her chin in the air. Dick followed

The children had discovered that their lives would be unendurable without pistolpractice. After much

forethought and selfdenial, Dick had saved seven shillings and sixpence, the price of a badly constructed

Belgian revolver. Maisie could only contribute half a crown to the syndicate for the purchase of a hundred

cartridges. 'You can save better than I can, Dick,' she explained; 'I like nice things to eat, and it doesn't matter

Dick grumbled a little at the arrangement, but went out and made the purchase, which the children were then

on their way to test. Revolvers did not lie in the scheme of their daily life as decreed for them by the guardian

who was incorrectly supposed to stand in the place of a mother to these two orphans. Dick had been under her

care for six years, during which time she had made her profit of the allowances supposed to be expended on

his clothes, and, partly through thoughtlessness, partly through a natural desire to pain,she was a widow of

some years anxious to marry again,had made his days burdensome on his young shoulders.

Where he growing older had sought a little sympathy, she gave him ridicule. The many hours that she could

spare from the ordering of her small house she devoted to what she called the hometraining of Dick Heldar.

Her religion, manufactured in the main by her own intelligence and a keen study of the Scriptures, was an aid

to her in this matter. At such times as she herself was not personally displeased with Dick, she left him to

understand that he had a heavy account to settle with his Creator; wherefore Dick learned to loathe his God as

intensely as he loathed Mrs. Jennett; and this is not a wholesome frame of mind for the young. Since she

chose to regard him as a hopeless liar, but an economical and selfcontained one, never throwing away the

least unnecessary fib, and never hesitating at the blackest, were it only plausible, that might make his life a

little easier. The treatment taught him at least the power of living alone,a power that was of service to him

when he went to a public school and the boys laughed at his clothes, which were poor in quality and much

mended. In the holidays he returned to the teachings of Mrs. Jennett, and, that the chain of discipline might

not be weakened by association with the world, was generally beaten, on one account or another, before he

The autumn of one year brought him a companion in bondage, a longhaired, grayeyed little atom, as

selfcontained as himself, who moved about the house silently and for the first few weeks spoke only to the

goat that was her chiefest friend on earth and lived in the backgarden. Mrs. Jennett objected to the goat on

the grounds that he was unChristian,which he certainly was. 'Then,' said the atom, choosing her words

very deliberately, 'I shall write to my lawyerpeoples and tell them that you are a very bad woman. Amomma

is mine, mine, mine!' Mrs. Jennett made a movement to the hall, where certain umbrellas and canes stood in a

rack. The atom understood as clearly as Dick what this meant. 'I have been beaten before,' she said, still in the

same passionless voice; 'I have been beaten worse than you can ever beat me. If you beat me I shall write to

my lawyerpeoples and tell them that you do not give me enough to eat. I am not afraid of you.' Mrs. Jennett

did not go into the hall, and the atom, after a pause to assure herself that all danger of war was past, went out,

Dick learned to know her as Maisie, and at first mistrusted her profoundly, for he feared that she might

interfere with the small liberty of action left to him. She did not, however; and she volunteered no

friendliness until Dick had taken the first steps. Long before the holidays were over, the stress of punishment

shared in common drove the children together, if it were only to play into each other's hands as they prepared

lies for Mrs. Jennett's use. When Dick returned to school, Maisie whispered, 'Now I shall be all alone to take

care of myself; but,' and she nodded her head bravely, 'I can do it. You promised to send Amomma a grass

collar. Send it soon.' A week later she asked for that collar by return of post, and wa not pleased when she

learned that it took time to make. When at last Dick forwarded the gift, she forgot to thank him for it.

Many holidays had come and gone since that day, and Dick had grown into a lanky hobbledehoy more than

ever conscious of his bad clothes. Not for a moment had Mrs. Jennett relaxed her tender care of him, but the

average canings of a public schoolDick fell under punishment about three times a monthfilled him with

contempt for her powers. 'She doesn't hurt,' he explained to Maisie, who urged him to rebellion, 'and she is

kinder to you after she has whacked me.' Dick shambled through the days unkempt in body and savage in

soul, as the smaller boys of the school learned to know, for when the spirit moved him he would hit them,

cunningly and with science. The same spirit made him more than once try to tease Maisie, but the girl refused

to be made unhappy. 'We are both miserable as it is,' said she. 'What is the use of trying to make things

The pistol was the outcome of that search. It could only be used on the muddiest foreshore of the beach, far

away from the bathingmachines and pierheads, below the grassy slopes of Fort Keeling. The tide ran out

nearly two miles on that coast, and the manycoloured mudbanks, touched by the sun, sent up a lamentable

smell of dead weed. It was late in the afternoon when Dick and Maisie arrived on their ground, Amomma

'Mf!' said Maisie, sniffing the air. 'I wonder what makes the sea so smelly? I don't like it!'

'You never like anything that isn't made just for you,' said Dick bluntly. 'Give me the cartridges, and I'll try

'Oh, half a mile,' said Maisie, promptly. 'At least it makes an awful noise. Be careful with the cartridges; I

He fired, and Amomma ran away bleating. The bullet threw up a spurt of mud to the right of the

Maisie took the pistol and stepped delicately to the verge of the mud, her hand firmly closed on the butt, her

Dick sat down on a tuft of bank and laughed. Amomma returned very cautiously. He was accustomed to

strange experiences in his afternoon walks, and, finding the cartridgebox unguarded, made investigations

'I think it hit the post,' she said, shading her eyes and looking out across the sailless sea.

'I know it has gone out to the Marazion Bellbuoy,' said Dick, with a chuckle. 'Fire low and to the left; then

Maisie turned, the revolver in her hand, just in time to see Amomma scampering away from the pebbles Dick

threw after him. Nothing is sacred to a billygoat. Being well fed and the adored of his mistress, Amomma

had naturally swallowed two loaded pinfire cartridges. Maisie hurried up to assure herself that Dick had not

'Horrid little beast! Then they'll joggle about inside him and blow up, and serve him right. . . . Oh, Dick! have

Revolvers are tricky things for young hands to deal with. Maisie could not explain how it had happened, but a

veil of reeking smoke separated her from Dick, and she was quite certain that the pistol had gone off in his

face. Then she heard him sputter, and dropped on her knees beside him, crying, 'Dick, you aren't hurt, are

'Of course you didn't, said Dick, coming out of the smoke and wiping his cheek. 'But you nearly blinded me.

That powder stuff stings awfully.' A neat little splash of gray led on a stone showed where the bullet had

'Don't,' said Dick, jumping to his feet and shaking himself. 'I'm not a bit hurt.'

'No, but I might have killed you,' protested Maisie, the corners of her mouth drooping. 'What should I have

'Gone home and told Mrs. Jennett.' Dick grinned at the thought; then, softening, 'Please don't worry about it.

Maisie would have wept on the least encouragement, but Dick's indifference, albeit his hand was shaking as

he picked up the pistol, restrained her. She lay panting on the beach while Dick methodically bombarded the

breakwater. 'Got it at last!' he exclaimed, as a lock of weed flew from the wood.

They fired in turns till the rickety little revolver nearly shook itself to pieces, and Amomma the

outcastbecause he might blow up at any momentbrowsed in the background and wondered why stones

were thrown at him. Then they found a balk of timber floating in a pool which was commanded by the

seaward slope of Fort Keeling, and they sat down together before this new target.

'Next holidays,' said Dick, as the now thoroughly fouled revolver kicked wildly in his hand, 'we'll get another

'I don't know. My lawyers have written to Mrs. Jennett, and I've got to be educated somewhere,in France,

'I shan't like it a bit. I suppose I shall be left. Look here, Maisie, is it really true you're going? Then these

holidays will be the last I shall see anything of you; and I go back to school next week. I wish'

The young blood turned his cheeks scarlet. Maisie was picking grasstufts and throwing them down the slope

at a yellow seapoppy nodding all by itself to the illimitable levels of the mudflats and the milkwhite sea

'Yes, but it would have been better ififyou hadshot straight over theredown by the breakwater.'

Maisie looked with large eyes for a moment. And this was the boy who only ten days before had decorated

Amomma's horns with cutpaper hamfrills and turned him out, a bearded derision, among the public ways!

'Don't be stupid,' she said reprovingly, and with swift instinct attacked the sideissue. 'How selfish you are!

Just think what I should have felt if that horrid thing had killed you! I'm quite miserable enough already.'

No answer for a long time. Dick dared not look at her. He felt, though he did not know, all that the past four

years had been to him, and this the more acutely since he had no knowledge to put his feelings in words.

'I can't say things,' he pleaded, 'and I'm awfully sorry for teasing you about Amomma the other day. It's all

different now, Maisie, can't you see? And you might have told me that you were going, instead of leaving me

'There isn't any; but we've been together years and years, and I didn't know how much I cared.'

'No, I didn't; but I do,I care awfully now, Maisie,' he gulped,'Maisie, darling, say you care too, please.'

'Yes, but if you promise before you go. Only saywill you?' A second 'darling' came to his lips more easily

than the first. There were few endearments in Dick's home or school life; he had to find them by instinct.

'And do you care?' For the first time in the past few minutes their eyes met and spoke for them who had no

'Oh, Dick, don't! Please don't! It was all right when we said goodmorning; but now it's all different!'

He had seen his property quarrel frequently, but he had never seen kisses exchanged before. The yellow

seapoppy was wiser, and nodded its head approvingly. Considered as a kiss, that was a failure, but since it

was the first, other than those demanded by duty, in all the world that either had ever given or taken, it

opened to them new worlds, and every one of them glorious, so that they were lifted above the consideration

of any worlds at all, especially those in which tea is necessary, and sat still, holding each other's hands and

'You can't forget now,' said Dick, at last. There was that on his cheek that stung more than gunpowder.

'I shouldn't have forgotten anyhow,' said Maisie, and they looked at each other and saw that each was

changed from the companion of an hour ago to a wonder and a mystery they could not understand. The sun

'Let's use the rest of the cartridges first,' said Dick; and he helped Maisie down the slope of the fort to the

sea,a descent that she was quite capable of covering at full speed. Equally gravely Maisie took the grimy

'Pooh!' said Maisie, with a little laugh of gratified vanity. She stood close to Dick as he loaded the revolver

for the last time and fired over the sea with a vague notion at the back of his head that he was protecting

Maisie from all the evils in the world. A puddle far across the mud caught the last rays of the sun and turned

into a wrathful red disc. The light held Dick's attention for a moment, and as he raised his revolver there fell

upon him a renewed sense of the miraculous, in that he was standing by Maisie who had promised to care for

him for an indefinite length of time till such date as A gust of the growing wind drove the girl's long

black hair across his face as she stood with her hand on his shoulder calling Amomma 'a little beast,' and for a

moment he was in the dark,a darkness that stung. The bullet went singing out to the empty sea.

'Spoilt my aim,' said he, shaking his head. 'There aren't any more cartridges; we shall have to run home.' But

they did not run. They walked very slowly, arm in arm. And it was a matter of indifference to them whether

the neglected Amomma with two pinfire cartridges in his inside blew up or trotted beside them; for they had

come into a golden heritage and were disposing of it with all the wisdom of all their years.

'And I shall be' quoth Dick, valiantly. Then he checked himself: 'I don't know what I shall be. I don't

seem to be able to pass any exams, but I can make awful caricatures of the masters. Ho! Ho!'

'Be an artist, then,' said Maisie. 'You're always laughing at my trying to draw; and it will do you good.'

'I'll never laugh at anything you do,' he answered. 'I'll be an artist, and I'll do things.'

'I've got a hundred and twenty pounds a year of my own. My guardians tell me I'm to have it when I come of

'Ah, I'm rich,' said Maisie. 'I've got three hundred a year all my own when I'm twentyone. That's why Mrs.

Jennett is kinder to me than she is to you. I wish, though, that I had somebody that belonged to me,just a

'Yes, we belongfor ever. It's very nice.' She squeezed his arm. The kindly darkness hid them both, and,

emboldened because he could only just see the profile of Maisie's cheek with the long lashes veiling the gray

eyes, Dick at the front door delivered himself of the words he had been boggling over for the last two hours.

'And Ilove you, Maisie,' he said, in a whisper that seemed to him to ring across the world,the world that

There was a scene, not, for the sake of discipline, to be reported, when Mrs. Jennett would have fallen upon

him, first for disgraceful unpunctuality, and secondly for nearly killing himself with a forbidden weapon.

'I was playing with it, and it went off by itself,' said Dick, when the powderpocked cheek could no longer be

hidden, 'but if you think you're going to lick me you're wrong. You are never going to touch me again.

Mrs. Jennett gasped and became livid. Maisie said nothing, but encouraged Dick with her eyes, and he

behaved abominably all that evening. Mrs. Jennett prophesied an immediate judgment of Providence and a

descent into Tophet later, but Dick walked in Paradise and would not hear. Only when he was going to bed

Mrs. Jennett recovered and asserted herself. He had bidden Maisie goodnight with downdropped eyes and

This meant that the usual goodnight kiss had been omitted. Maisie, white to the lips, thrust her cheek

forward with a fine air of indifference, and was duly pecked by Dick, who tramped out of the room red as

fire. That night he dreamed a wild dream. He had won all the world and brought it to Maisie in a

cartridgebox, but she turned it over with her foot, and, instead of saying 'Thank you,' cried 'Where is the

'I'M NOT angry with the British public, but I wish we had a few thousand of them scattered among these

rooks. They wouldn't be in such a hurry to get at their morning papers then. Can't you imagine the regulation

householderLover of Justice, Constant Reader, Paterfamilias, and all that lotfrizzling on hot gravel?'

'With a blue veil over his head, and his clothes in strips. Has any man here a needle? I've got a piece of

'I'll lend you a packingneedle for six square inches of it then. Both my knees are worn through.'

'Why not six square acres, while you're about it? But lend me the needle, and I'll see what I can do with the

selvage. I don't think there's enough to protect my royal body from the cold blast as it is. What are you doing

'Study of our Special Correspondent repairing his wardrobe,' said Dick, gravely, as the other man kicked off a

pair of sorely worn ridingbreeches and began to fit a square of coarse canvas over the most obvious open

'Sugarbags, indeed! Hi! you pilot man there! lend me all the sails for that whaleboat.'

A fezcrowned head bobbed up in the sternsheets, divided itself into exact halves with one flashing grin,

and bobbed down again. The man of the tattered breeches, clad only in a Norfolk jacket and a gray flannel

Some twenty whaleboats were nuzzling a sandbank which was dotted with English soldiery of half a dozen

corps, bathing or washing their clothes. A heap of boatrollers, commissariatboxes, sugarbags, and flour

and smallarmammunitioncases showed where one of the whaleboats had been compelled to unload

hastily; and a regimental carpenter was swearing aloud as he tried, on a wholly insufficient allowance of

'First the bloomin' rudder snaps,' said he to the world in general; 'then the mast goes; an' then, s' 'help me,

when she can't do nothin' else, she opens 'erself out like a cockeyes Chinese lotus.'

'Exactly the case with my breeches, whoever you are,' said the tailor, without looking up. 'Dick, I wonder

There was no answer, save the incessant angry murmur of the Nile as it raced round a basaltwalled bend and

foamed across a rockridge half a mile upstream. It was as though the brown weight of the river would drive

the white men back to their own country. The indescribable scent of Nile mud in the air told that the stream

was falling and the next few miles would be no light thing for the whaleboats to overpass. The desert ran

down almost to the banks, where, among gray, red, and black hillocks, a camelcorps was encamped. No

man dared even for a day lose touch of the slowmoving boats; there had been no fighting for weeks past,

and throughout all that time the Nile had never spared them. Rapid had followed rapid, rock rock, and

islandgroup islandgroup, till the rank and file had long since lost all count of direction and very nearly of

time. They were moving somewhere, they did not know why, to do something, they did not know what.

Before them lay the Nile, and at the other end of it was one Gordon, fighting for the dear life, in a town called

Khartoum. There were columns of British troops in the desert, or in one of the many deserts; there were yet

more columns waiting to embark on the river; there were fresh drafts waiting at Assioot and Assuan; there

were lies and rumours running over the face of the hopeless land from Suakin to the Sixth Cataract, and men

supposed generally that there must be some one in authority to direct the general scheme of the many

movements. The duty of that particular rivercolumn was to keep the whaleboats afloat in the water, to

avoid trampling on the villagers' crops when the gangs 'tracked' the boats with lines thrown from midstream,

to get as much sleep and food as was possible, and, above all, to press on without delay in the teeth of the

With the soldiers sweated and toiled the correspondents of the newspapers, and they were almost as ignorant

as their companions. But it was above all things necessary that England at breakfast should be amused and

thrilled and interested, whether Gordon lived or died, or half the British army went to pieces in the sands. The

Soudan campaign was a picturesque one, and lent itself to vivid wordpainting. Now and again a 'Special'

managed to get slain,which was not altogether a disadvantage to the paper that employed him,and more

often the handtohand nature of the fighting allowed of miraculous escapes which were worth telegraphing

home at eighteenpence the word. There were many correspondents with many corps and columns,from the

veterans who had followed on the heels of the cavalry that occupied Cairo in '82, what time Arabi Pasha

called himself king, who had seen the first miserable work round Suakin when the sentries were cut up

nightly and the scrub swarmed with spears, to youngsters jerked into the business at the end of a

Among the seniorsthose who knew every shift and change in the perplexing postal arrangements, the value

of the seediest, weediest Egyptian garron offered for sale in Cairo or Alexandria, who could talk a

telegraphclerk into amiability and soothe the ruffled vanity of a newly appointed staffofficer when press

regulations became burdensomewas the man in the flannel shirt, the blackbrowed Torpenhow. He

represented the Central Southern Syndicate in the campaign, as he had represented it in the Egyptian war, and

elsewhere. The syndicate did not concern itself greatly with criticisms of attack and the like. It supplied the

masses, and all it demanded was picturesqueness and abundance of detail; for there is more joy in England

over a soldier who insubordinately steps out of square to rescue a comrade than over twenty generals slaving

He had met at Suakin a young man, sitting on the edge of a recently abandoned redoubt about the size of a

'What are you for?' said Torpenhow. The greeting of the correspondent is that of the commercial traveller on

Torpenhow waited till the sketch was finished, and when he had looked at it said, 'What's your business

'Nothing; there was a row, so I came. I'm supposed to be doing something down at the paintingslips among

the boats, or else I'm in charge of the condenser on one of the waterships. I've forgotten which.'

'You've cheek enough to build a redoubt with,' said Torpenhow, and took stock of the new acquaintance. 'Do

said he, sententiously, showing them one after another.'Chief mate dirked by a comprador.Junk ashore

Berbera.Slavedhow being chased round Tajurrah Bah.Soldier lying dead in the moonlight outside

'H'm!' said Torpenhow, 'can't say I care for Verestchaginandwater myself, but there's no accounting for

Torpenhow looked at the sketches again, and nodded. 'Yes, you're right to take your first chance when you

He rode away swiftly through the Gate of the Two WarShips, rattled across the causeway into the town, and

wired to his syndicate, 'Got man here, picturework. Good and cheap. Shall I arrange? Will do letterpress

The man on the redoubt sat swinging his legs and murmuring, 'I knew the chance would come, sooner or

later. By Gad, they'll have to sweat for it if I come through this business alive!'

In the evening Torpenhow was able to announce to his friend that the Central Southern Agency was willing

to take him on trial, paying expenses for three months. 'And, by the way, what's your name?' said Torpenhow.

'They've taken you on chance. You must justify the choice. You'd better stick to me. I'm going upcountry

with a column, and I'll do what I can for you. Give me some of your sketches taken here, and I'll send 'em

along.' To himself he said, 'That's the best bargain the Central southern has ever made; and they got me

So it came to pass that, after some purchase of horseflesh and arrangements financial and political, Dick

was made free of the New and Honourable Fraternity of war correspondents, who all possess the inalienable

right of doing as much work as they can and getting as much for it as Providence and their owners shall

please. To these things are added in time, if the brother be worthy, the power of glib speech that neither man

nor woman can resist when a meal or a bed is in question, the eye of a horsecope, the skill of a cook, the

constitution of a bullock, the digestion of an ostrich, and an infinite adaptability to all circumstances. But

many die before they attain to this degree, and the pastmasters in the craft appear for the most part in

dressclothes when they are in England, and thus their glory is hidden from the multitude.

Dick followed Torpenhow wherever the latter's fancy chose to lead him, and between the two they managed

to accomplish some work that almost satisfied themselves. It was not an easy life in any way, and under its

influence the two were drawn ver closely together, for they ate from the same dish, they shared the same

waterbottle, and, most binding tie of all, their mails went off together. It was Dick who managed to make

gloriously drunk a telegraphclerk in a palm hut far beyond the Second Cataract, and, while the man lay in

bliss on the floor, possessed himself of some laboriously acquired exclusive information, forwarded by a

confiding correspondent of an opposition syndicate, made a careful duplicate of the matter, and brought the

result to Torpenhow, who said that all was fair in love or war correspondence, and built an excellent

descriptive article from his rival's riotous waste of words. It was Torpenhow whobut the tale of their

adventures, together and apart, from Philae to the waste wilderness of Herawi and Muella, would fill many

books. They had been penned into a square side by side, in deadly fear of being shot by overexcited

soldiers; they had fought with baggagecamels in the chill dawn; they had jogged along in silence under

blinding sun on indefatigable little Egyptian horses; and they had floundered on the shallows of the Nile

when the whaleboat in which they had found a berth chose to hit a hidden rock and rip out half her

Now they were sitting on the sandbank, and the whaleboats were bringing up the remainder of the column.

'Yes,' said Torpenhow, as he put the last rude stitches into his overlongneglected gear, 'it has been a

'You want the Euryalus brought up above the Third Cataract, don't you? and eightyoneton guns at Jakdul?

Now, I'm quite satisfied with my breeches.' He turned round gravely to exhibit himself, after the manner of a

'It's very pretty. Specially the lettering on the sack. G.B.T. Government Bullock Train. That's a sack from

What the mischief are the camelcorps doing yonder?' Torpenhow shaded his eyes and looked across the

A bugle blew furiously, and the men on the bank hurried to their arms and accoutrements.

'D'you remember the picture? It's by Michael Angelo; all beginners copy it. That scrub's alive with enemy.'

The camelcorps on the bank yelled to the infantry to come to them, and a hoarse shouting down the river

showed that the remainder of the column had wind of the trouble and was hastening to take share in it. As

swiftly as a reach of still water is crisped by the wind, the rockstrewn ridges and scrubtopped hills were

Mercifully, it occurred to these to stand far off for a time, to shout and gesticulate joyously. One man even

delivered himself of a long story. The camelcorps did not fire. They were only too glad of a little

breathingspace, until some sort of square could be formed. The men on the sandbank ran to their side; and

the whaleboats, as they toiled up within shouting distance, were thrust into the nearest bank and emptied of

all save the sick and a few men to guard them. The Arab orator ceased his outcries, and his friends howled.

'They look like the Mahdi's men,' said Torpenhow, elbowing himself into the crush of the square; 'but what

'Then the Mahdi's taken another town,' said Dick, 'and set all these yelping devils free to show us up. Lend us

'Our scouts should have told us of this. We've been trapped,' said a subaltern. 'Aren't the camel guns ever

There was no need of any order. The men flung themselves panting against the sides of the square, for they

had good reason to know that whoso was left outside when the fighting began would very probably die in an

extremely unpleasant fashion. The little hundredandfiftypound camelguns posted at one corner of the

square opened the ball as the square moved forward by its right to get possession of a knoll of rising ground.

All had fought in this manner many times before, and there was no novelty in the entertainment; always the

same hot and stifling formation, the smell of dust and leather, the same boltlike rush of the enemy, the same

pressure on the weakest side, the few minutes of handtohand scuffle, and then the silence of the desert,

broken only by the yells of those whom their handful of cavalry attempted to purse. They had become

careless. The camelguns spoke at intervals, and the square slouched forward amid the protesting of the

camels. Then came the attack of three thousand men who had not learned from books that it is impossible for

A few dropping shots heralded their approach, and a few horsemen led, but the bulk of the force was naked

humanity, mad with rage, and armed with the spear and the sword. The instinct of the desert, where there is

always much war, told them that the right flank of the square was the weakest, for they swung clear of the

front. The camelguns shelled them as they passed and opened for an instant lanes through their midst, most

like those quickclosing vistas in a Kentish hopgarden seen when the train races by at full speed; and the

infantry fire, held till the opportune moment, dropped them in closepacking hundreds. No civilised troops in

the world could have endured the hell through which they came, the living leaping high to avoid the dying

who clutched at their heels, the wounded cursing and staggering forward, till they fella torrent black as the

Then the line of the dusty troops and the faint blue desert sky overhead went out in rolling smoke, and the

little stones on the heated ground ant the tinderdry clumps of scrub became matters of surpassing interest,

for men measured their agonised retreat and recovery by these things, counting mechanically and hewing

their way back to chosen pebble and branch. There was no semblance of any concerted fighting. For aught

the men knew, the enemy might be attempting all four sides of the square at once. Their business was to

destroy what lay in front of them, to bayonet in the back those who passed over them, and, dying, to drag

Dick waited with Torpenhow and a young doctor till the stress grew unendurable. It was hopeless to attend to

the wounded till the attack was repulsed, so the three moved forward gingerly towards the weakest side of the

square. There was a rush from without, the short houghhough of the stabbing spears, and a man on a horse,

followed by thirty or forty others, dashed through, yelling and hacking. The right flank of the square sucked

in after them, and the other sides sent help. The wounded, who knew that they had but a few hours more to

live, caught at the enemy's feet and brought them down, or, staggering into a discarded rifle, fired blindly into

Dick was conscious that somebody had cut him violently across his helmet, that he had fired his revolver into

a black, foamflecked face which forthwith ceased to bear any resemblance to a face, and that Torpenhow

had gone down under an Arab whom he had tried to 'collar low,' and was turning over and over with his

captive, feeling for the man's eyes. The doctor jabbed at a venture with a bayonet, and a helmetless soldier

fired over Dick's shoulder: the flying grains of powder stung his cheek. It was to Torpenhow that Dick turned

by instinct. The representative of the Central Southern Syndicate had shaken himself clear of his enemy, and

rose, wiping his thumb on his trousers. The Arab, both hands to his forehead, screamed aloud, then snatched

up his spear and rushed at Torpenhow, who was panting under shelter of Dick's revolver. Dick fired twice,

and the man dropped limply. His upturned face lacked one eye. The musketryfire redoubled, but cheers

mingled with it. The rush had failed and the enemy were flying. If the heart of the square were shambles, the

ground beyond was a butcher's shop. Dick thrust his way forward between the maddened men. The remnant

of the enemy were retiring, as the fewthe very fewEnglish cavalry rode down the laggards.

Beyond the lines of the dead, a broad bloodstained Arab spear cast aside in the retreat lay across a stump of

scrub, and beyond this again the illimitable dark levels of the desert. The sun caught the steel and turned it

into a red disc. Some one behind him was saying, 'Ah, get away, you brute!' Dick raised his revolver and

pointed towards the desert. His eye was held by the red spash in the distance, and the clamour about him

seemed to die down to a very faraway whisper, like the whisper of a level sea. There was the revolver and

the red light. . . . and the voice of some one scaring something away, exactly as had fallen somewhere

before,a darkness that stung. He fired at random, and the bullet went out across the desert as he muttered,

'Spoilt my aim. There aren't any more cartridges. We shall have to run home.' He put his hand to his head and

'Old man, you're cut rather badly,' said Torpenhow. 'I owe you something for this business. Thanks. Stand up!

Throughout the night, when the troops were encamped by the whaleboats, a black figure danced in the

strong moonlight on the sandbar and shouted that Khartoum the accursed one was dead,was dead,was

dead,that two steamers were rockstaked on the Nile outside the city, and that of all their crews there

But Torpenhow took no heed. He was watching Dick, who called aloud to the restless Nile for Maisie,and

'Behold a phenomenon,' said Torpenhow, rearranging the blanket. 'Here is a man, presumably human, who

mentions the name of one woman only. And I've seen a good deal of delirium, too.Dick, here's some fizzy

THE SOUDAN campaign and Dick's broken head had been some months ended and mended, and the Central

Southern Syndicate had paid Dick a certain sum on account for work done, which work they were careful to

assure him was not altogether up to their standard. Dick heaved the letter into the Nile at Cairo, cashed the

'I am going to lie up for a while and rest,' said Torpenhow. 'I don't know where I shall live in London, but if

Are you starying here on the offchance of another row? There will be none till the Southern Soudan is

Goodbye; bless you; come back when your money's spent; and give me your address.'

Dick loitered in Cairo, Alexandria, Ismailia, and Port Said,especially Port Said. There is iniquity in many

parts of the world, and vice in all, but the concentrated essence of all the iniquities and all the vices in all the

continents finds itself at Port Said. And through the heart of that sandbordered hell, where the mirage

flickers day long above the Bitter Lake, move, if you will only wait, most of the men and women you have

known in this life. Dick established himself in quarters more riotous than respectable. He spent his evenings

on the quay, and boarded many ships, and saw very many friends,gracious Englishwomen with whom he

had talked not too wisely in the veranda of Shepherd's Hotel, hurrying war correspondents, skippers of the

contract troopships employed in the campaign, army officers by the score, and others of less reputable

He had choice of all the races of the East and West for studies, and the advantage of seeing his subjects under

the influence of strong excitement, at the gamingtables, saloons, dancinghells, and elsewhere. For

recreation there was the straight vista of the Canal, the blazing sands, the procession of shipping, and the

white hospitals where the English soldiers lay. He strove to set down in black and white and colour all that

Providence sent him, and when that supply was ended sought about for fresh material. It was a fascinating

employment, but it ran away with his money, and he had drawn in advance the hundred and twenty pounds to

thought he, and was addressing himself to this new fate when a mysterious telegram arrived from Torpenhow

A large smile overspread his face. 'So soon! that's a good hearing,' said he to himself. 'There will be an orgy

tonight. I'll stand or fall by my luck. Faith, it's time it came!' He deposited half of his funds in the hands of

his wellknown friends Monsieur and Madame Binat, and ordered himself a Zanzibar dance of the finest.

Monsieur Binat was shaking with drink, but Madame smiles sympathetically 'Monsieur needs a chair, of

Binat raised a bluewhite face from a cot in the inner room. 'I understand,' he quavered. 'We all know

Monsieur. Monsieur is an artist, as I have been.' Dick nodded. 'In the end,' said Binat, with gravity, 'Monsieur

'For my face? I knew it would be so. For my face? My God! and for my degradation so tremendous! I will

not. Take him away. He is a devil. Or at least do thou, Celeste, demand of him more.' The excellent Binat

'All things are for sale in Port Said,' said Madame. 'If my husband comes it will be so much more. Eh, 'how

The money was paid, and the mad dance was held at night in a walled courtyard at the back of Madame

Binat's house. The lady herself, in faded mauve silk always about to slide from her yellow shoulders, played

the piano, and to the tinpot music of a Western waltz the naked Zanzibari girls danced furiously by the light

of kerosene lamps. Binat sat upon a chair and stared with eyes that saw nothing, till the whirl of the dance and

the clang of the rattling piano stole into the drink that took the place of blood in his veins, and his face

glistened. Dick took him by the chin brutally and turned that face to the light. Madame Binat looked over her

shoulder and smiled with many teeth. Dick leaned against the wall and sketched for an hour, till the kerosene

lamps began to smell, and the girls threw themselves panting on the hardbeaten ground. Then he shut his

book with a snap and moved away, Binat plucking feebly at his elbow. 'Show me,' he whimpered. 'I too was

once an artist, even I!' Dick showed him the rough sketch. 'Am I that?' he screamed. 'Will you take that away

'Monsieur has paid for all,' said Madame. 'To the pleasure of seeing Monsieur again.'

The courtyard gate shut, and Dick hurried up the sandy street to the nearest gamblinghell, where he was

well known. 'If the luck holds, it's an omen; if I lose, I must stay here.' He placed his money picturesquely

Three turns of the wheel left him richer by twenty pounds, and he went down to the shipping to make friends

with the captain of a decayed cargosteamer, who landed him in London with fewer pounds in his pocket

A thin gray fog hung over the city, and the streets were very cold; for summer was in England.

'It's a cheerful wilderness, and it hasn't the knack of altering much,' Dick thought, as he tramped from the

The packed houses gave no answer. Dick looked down the long lightless streets and at the appalling rush of

traffic. 'Oh, you rabbithutches!' said he, addressing a row of highly respectable semidetached residences.

'Do you know what you've got to do later on? You have to supply me with menservants and

maidservants,'here he smacked his lips,'and the peculiar treasure of kings. Meantime I'll clothes and

boots, and presently I will return and trample on you.' He stepped forward energetically; he saw that one of

his shoes was burst at the side. As he stooped to make investigations, a man jostled him into the gutter. 'All

Good clothes and boots are not cheap, and Dick left his last shop with the certainty that he would be

respectably arrayed for a time, but with only fifty shillings in his pocket. He returned to streets by the Docks,

and lodged himself in one room, where the sheets on the bed were almost audibly marked in case of theft, and

where nobody seemed to go to bed at all. When his clothes arrived he sought the Central Southern Syndicate

for Torpenhow's address, and got it, with the intimation that there was still some money waiting for him.

'Between thirty and forty pounds. If it would be any convenience to you, of course we could let you have it at

'If I show that I want anything now, I'm lost,' he said to himself. 'All I need I'll take later on.' Then, aloud, 'It's

hardly worth while; and I'm going to the country for a month, too. Wait till I come back, and I'll see about it.'

'But we trust, Mr. Heldar, that you do not intend to sever your connection with us?'

Dick's business in life was the study of faces, and he watched the speaker keenly. 'That man means

something,' he said. 'I'll do no business till I've seen Torpenhow. There's a big deal coming.' So he departed,

making no promises, to his one little room by the Docks. And that day was the seventh of the month, and that

It is not easy for a man of catholic tastes and healthy appetites to exist for twentyfour days on fifty shillings.

Nor is it cheering to begin the experiment alone in all the loneliness of London. Dick paid seven shillings a

week for his lodging, which left him rather less than a shilling a day for food and drink. Naturally, his first

purchase was of the materials of his craft; he had been without them too long. Half a day's investigations and

comparison brought him to the conclusion that sausages and mashed potatoes, twopence a plate, were the best

food. Now, sausages once or twice a week for breakfast are not unpleasant. As lunch, even, with mashed

potatoes, they become monotonous. At dinner they are impertinent. At the end of three days Dick loathed

sausages, and, going, forth, pawned his watch to revel on sheep's head, which is not as cheap as it looks,

owing to the bones and the gravy. Then he returned to sausages and mashed potatoes. Then he confined

himself entirely to mashed potatoes for a day, and was unhappy because of pain in his inside. Then he

pawned his waistcoat and his tie, and thought regretfully of money thrown away in times past. There are few

things more edifying unto Art than the actual bellypinch of hunger, and Dick in his few walks abroad,he

did not care for exercise; it raised desires that could not be satisfiedfound himself dividing mankind into

two classes,those who looked as if they might give him something to eat, and those who looked otherwise.

'I never knew what I had to learn about the human face before,' he thought; and, as a reward for his humility,

Providence caused a cabdriver at a sausageshop where Dick fed that night to leave half eaten a great chunk

of bread. Dick took it,would have fought all the world for its possession,and it cheered him.

The month dragged through at last, and, nearly prancing with impatience, he went to draw his money. Then

he hastened to Torpenhow's address and smelt the smell of cooking meats all along the corridors of the

chambers. Torpenhow was on the top floor, and Dick burst into his room, to be received with a hug which

nearly cracked his ribs, as Torpenhow dragged him tot he light and spoke of twenty different things in the

'No, anything but sausages! Torp, I've been starving on that accursed horseflesh for thirty days and thirty

Dick spoke of the last few weeks with unbridled speech. Then he opened his coat; there was no waistcoat

'You haven't much sense, but you've got a backbone, anyhow. Eat, and talk afterwards.' Dick fell upon eggs

and bacon and gorged till he could gorge no more. Torpenhow handed him a filled pipe, and he smoked as

'Couldn't; I owe you too much already, old man. Besides I had a sort of superstition that this temporary

starvationthat's what it was, and it hurtwould bring me luck later. It's over and done with now, and none

of the syndicate know how hard up I was. Fire away. What's the exact state of affairs as regards myself?'

'You had my wire? You've caught on here. People like your work immensely. I don't know why, but they do.

They say you have a fresh touch and a new way of drawing things. And, because they're chiefly homebred

English, they say you have insight. You're wanted by half a dozen papers; you're wanted to illustrate books.'

'You're wanted to work up your smaller sketches and sell them to the dealers. They seem to think the money

'They are subject to fits, if that's what you mean; and you happen to be the object of the latest fit among those

who are interested in what they call Art. Just now you're a fashion, a phenomenon, or whatever you please. I

appeared to be the only person who knew anything about you here, and I have been showing the most useful

men a few of the sketches you gave me from time to time. Those coming after your work on the Central

'Huh! call it luck! Do call it luck, when a man has been kicking about the world like a dog, waiting for it to

'Come here,' said Torpenhow, crossing the landing. 'This place is a big box room really, but it will do for you.

There's your skylight, or your north light, or whatever window you call it, and plenty of room to thrash about

'Good enough,' said Dick, looking round the large room that took up a third of a top story in the rickety

chambers overlooking the Thames. A pale yellow sun shone through the skylight and showed the much dirt

of the place. Three steps led from the door to the landing, and three more to Torpenhow's room. The well of

the staircase disappeared into darkness, pricked by tiny gasjets, and there were sounds of men talking and

'Do they give you a free hand here?' said Dick, cautiously. He was Ishmael enough to know the value of

'Anything you like; latchkeys and license unlimited. We are permanent tenants for the most part here. 'Tisn't

a place I would recommend for a Young Men's Christian Association, but it will serve. I took these rooms for

'You didn't suppose you were going away from me, did you?' Torpenhow put his hand on Dick's shoulder,

and the two walked up and down the room, henceforward to be called the studio, in sweet and silent

communion. They heard rapping at Torpenhow's door. 'That's some ruffian come up for a drink,' said

Torpenhow; and he raised his voice cheerily. There entered no one more ruffianly than a portly middleaged

gentleman in a satinfaced frockcoat. His lips were parted and pale, and there were deep pouches under the

'Weak heart,' said Dick to himself, and, as he shook hands, 'very weak heart. His pulse is shaking his fingers.'

The man introduced himself as the head of the Central Southern Syndicate and 'one of the most ardent

Heldar. I assure you, in the name of the syndicate, that we are immensely indebted to you; and I trust, Mr.

Heldar, you won't forget that we were largely instrumental in bringing you before the public.' He panted

Dick glanced at Torpenhow, whose left eyelid lay for a moment dead on his cheek.

'You've paid me so well that I couldn't, you know. By the way, when I am settled in this place I should like to

send and get my sketches. There must be nearly a hundred and fifty of them with you.'

'That is eris what I came to speak about. I fear we can't allow it exactly, Mr. Heldar. In the absence of any

'Yes; and we hope to have your help, on your own terms, Mr. Heldar, to assist us in arranging a little

exhibition, which, backed by our name and the influence we naturally command among the press, should be

'Belong to me. You engaged me by wire, you paid me the lowest rates you dared. You can't mean to keep

Dick walked up and down, thinking. He saw the whole of his little stock in trade, the first weapon of his

equipment, annexed at the outset of his campaign by an elderly gentleman whose name Dick had not caught

aright, who said that he represented a syndicate, which was a thing for which Dick had not the least

reverence. The injustice of the proceedings did not much move him; he had seen the strong hand prevail too

often in other places to be squeamish over the moral aspects of right and wrong.

But he ardently desired the blood of the gentleman in the frockcoat, and when he spoke again, and when he

spoke again it was with a strained sweetness that Torpenhow knew well for the beginning of strife.

'Forgive me, sir, but you have nono younger man who can arrange this business with me?'

The man stared blankly at Dick, and then at Torpenhow, who was leaning against the wall. He was not used

'Yes, it is rather a coldblooded steal,' said Torpenhow, critically; 'but I'm afraid, I am very much afraid,

you've struck the wrong man. Be careful, Dick; remember, this isn't the Soudan.'

'Considering what services the syndicate have done you in putting your name before the world'

This was not a fortunate remark; it reminded Dick of certain vagrant years lived out in loneliness and strife

and unsatisfied desires. The memory did not contrast well with the prosperous gentleman who proposed to

'I don't know quite what to do with you,' began Dick, meditatively. 'Of course you're a thief, and you ought to

be half killed, but in your case you'd probably die. I don't want you dead on this floor, and, besides, it's

He put one hand on the man's forearm and ran the other down the plump body beneath the coat. 'My

goodness!' said he to Torpenhow, 'and this gray oaf dares to be a thief! I have seen an Esneh cameldriver

have the black hide taken off his body in strips for stealing half a pound of wet dates, and he was as tough as

There are few things more poignantly humiliating than being handled by a man who does not intend to strike.

The head of the syndicate began to breathe heavily. Dick walked round him, pawing him, as a cat paws a soft

hearthrug. Then he traced with his forefinger the leaden pouches underneath the eyes, and shook his head.

'You were going to steal my things,mine, mine, mine!you, who don't know when you may die.

Write a note to your office,you say you're the head of it,and order them to give Torpenhow my

sketches,every one of them. Wait a minute: your hand's shaking. Now!' He thrust a pocketbook before

him. The note was written. Torpenhow took it and departed without a word, while Dick walked round and

round the spellbound captive, giving him such advice as he conceived best for the welfare of his soul. When

Torpenhow returned with a gigantic portfolio, he heard Dick say, almost soothingly, 'Now, I hope this will be

a lesson to you; and if you worry me when I have settled down to work with any nonsense about actions for

assault, believe me, I'll catch you and manhandle you, and you'll die. You haven't very long to live, anyhow.

Go! Imshi, Vootsak,get out!' The man departed, staggering and dazed. Dick drew a long breath: 'Phew!

what a lawless lot these people are! The first thing a poor orphan meets is gang robbery, organised burglary!

Think of the hideous blackness of that man's mind! Are my sketches all right, Torp?'

'Yes; one hundred and fortyseven of them. Well, I must say, Dick, you've begun well.'

'He was interfering with me. It only meant a few pounds to him, but it was everything to me. I don't think

he'll bring an action. I gave him some medical advice gratis about the state of his body. It was cheap at the

Two minutes later Dick had thrown himself down on the floor and was deep in the portfolio, chuckling

lovingly as he turned the drawings over and thought of the price at which they had been bought.

The afternoon was well advanced when Torpenhow came to the door and saw Dick dancing a wild saraband

'They're good! They're damned good! They'll go like flame! I shall have an exhibition of them on my own

brazen hook. And that man would have cheated me out of it! Do you know that I'm sorry now that I didn't

'Go out,' said Torpenhow,'go out and pray to be delivered from the sin of arrogance, which you never will

be. Bring your things up from whatever place you're staying in, and we'll try to make this barn a little more

'WELL, and how does success taste?' said Torpenhow, some three months later. He had just returned to

'I want more,heaps more. The lean years have passed, and I approve of these fat ones.'

Torpenhow was sprawling in a long chair with a small foxterrier asleep on his chest, while Dick was

preparing a canvas. A dais, a background, and a layfigure were the only fixed objects in the place. They rose

from a wreck of oddments that began with feltcovered waterbottles, belts, and regimental badges, and

ended with a small bale of secondhand uniforms and a stand of mixed arms. The mark of muddy feet on the

dais showed that a military model had just gone away. The watery autumn sunlight was falling, and shadows

'Yes,' said Dick, deliberately, 'I like the power; I like the fun; I like the fuss; and above all I like the money. I

almost like the people who make the fuss and pay the money. Almost. But they're a queer gang,an

'They have been good enough to you, at any rate. Than tinpot exhibition of your sketches must have paid.

'Never mind. I sold every shred of canvas I wanted to; and, on my word, I believe it was because they

I should have got better prices if I worked my things on wool or scratched them on camelbone instead of

using mere black and white and colour. Verily, they are a queer gang, these people. Limited isn't the word to

describe 'em. I met a fellow the other day who told me that it was impossible that shadows on white sand

should be blue,ultramarine,as they are. I found out, later, that the man had been as far as Brighton

beach; but he knew all about Art, confound him. He gave me a lecture on it, and recommended me to go to

'I studied with him for two years in Paris. He taught by personal magnetism. All he ever said was,

"Continuez, mes enfants," and you had to make the best you could of that. He had a divine touch, and he

knew something about colour. Kami used to dream colour; I swear he could never have seen the genuine

'Recollect some of those views in the Soudan?' said Torpenhow, with a provoking drawl.

Dick squirmed in his place. 'Don't! It makes me want to get out there again. What colour that was! Opal and

umber and amber and claret and brickred and sulphurcockatoocrestsulphuragainst brown, with a

niggerblack rock sticking up in the middle of it all, and a decorative frieze of camels festooning in front of a

pure pale turquoise sky.' He began to walk up and down. 'And yet, you know, if you try to give these people

the thing as God gave it, keyed down to their comprehension and according to the powers He has given

'Half a dozen epicene young pagans who haven't even been to Algiers will tell you, first, that your notion is

''This comes of my leaving town for a month. Dickie, you've been promenading among the toyshops and

'I couldn't help it,' said Dick, penitently. 'You weren't here, and it was lonely these long evenings. A man can't

'I wish I had; but I forgathered with some men of sorts. They said they were artists, and I knew some of them

could draw,but they wouldn't draw. They gave me tea,tea at five in the afternoon!and talked about

Art and the state of their souls. As if their souls mattered. I've heard more about Art and seen less of her in

the last six months than in the whole of my life. Do you remember Cassavetti, who worked for some

continental syndicate, out with the desert column? He was a regular Christmastree of contraptions when he

took the field in full fig, with his waterbottle, lanyard, revolver, writingcase, housewife, giglamps, and

the Lord knows what all. He used to fiddle about with 'em and show us how they worked; but he never

'Dear old Nilghai! He's in town, fatter than ever. He ought to be up here this evening. I see the comparison

perfectly. You should have kept clear of all that manmillinery. Serves you right; and I hope it will unsettle

Dick dragged forward a canvas laid face to the wall. 'Here's a sample of real Art. It's going to be a facsimile

reproduction for a weekly. I called it "His Last Shot." It's worked up from the little watercolour I made

outside El Maghrib. Well, I lured my model, a beautiful rifleman, up here with drink; I drored him, and I

redrored him, and I redrored him, and I made him a flushed, dishevelled, bedevilled scallawag, with his

helmet at the back of his head, and the living fear of death in his eye, and the blood oozing out of a cut over

Dick laughed. 'Well, it's only to you I'm talking. I did him just as well as I knew how, making allowance for

the slickness of oils. Then the artmanager of that abandoned paper said that his subscribers wouldn't like it.

It was brutal and coarse and violent,man being naturally gentle when he's fighting for his life. They wanted

something more restful, with a little more colour. I could have said a good deal, but you might as well talk to

a sheep as an artmanager. I took my "Last Shot" back. Behold the result! I put him into a lovely red coat

without a speck on it. That is Art. I polished his boots,observe the high light on the toe. That is Art. I

I pipeclayed his helmet,pipeclay is always used on active service, and is indispensable to Art. I shaved his

chin, I washed his hands, and gave him an air of fatted peace. Result, military tailor's patternplate. Price,

thank Heaven, twice as much as for the first sketch, which was moderately decent.'

'Why not? I did it. Alone I did it, in the interests of sacred, homebred Art and Dickenson's Weekly.'

Torpenhow smoked in silence for a while. Then came the verdict, delivered from rolling clouds: 'If you were

only a mass of blathering vanity, Dick, I wouldn't mind,I'd let you go to the deuce on your own

mahlstick; but when I consider what you are to me, and when I find that to vanity you add the

twopennyhalfpenny pique of a twelveyearold girl, then I bestir myself in your behalf. Thus!'

The canvas ripped as Torpenhow's booted foot shot through it, and the terrier jumped down, thinking rats

You are an idiot, because no man born of woman is strong enough to take liberties with his public, even

'But they don't know any better. What can you expect from creatures born and bred in this light?' Dick

pointed to the yellow fog. 'If they want furniturepolish, let them have furniturepolish, so long as they pay

'That sounds very fine, but it has nothing to do with the case. They are they people you have to do work for,

whether you like it or not. They are your masters. Don't be deceived, Dickie, you aren't strong enough to trifle

Moreover,Come back, Binkie: that red daub isn't going anywhere,unless you take precious good care,

you will fall under the damnation of the checkbook, and that's worse than death. You will get

drunkyoure half drunk alreadyon easily acquired money. For that money and you own infernal vanity

you are willing to deliberately turn out bad work. You'll do quite enough bad work without knowing it. And,

Dickie, as I love you and as I know you love me, I am not going to let you cut off your nose to spite your face

'Don't know, said Dick. 'I've been trying to make myself angry, but I can't, you're so abominably reasonable.

'Why the Dickenson do you want to work on a weekly paper? It's slow bleeding of power.'

Torpenhow watched him with large contempt. 'Why, I thought it was a man!' said he. 'It's a child.'

'No, it isn't,' said Dick, wheeling quickly. 'You've no notion owhat the certainty of cash means to a man who

Nothing will pay me for some of my life's joys; on that Chinese pigboat, for instance, when we ate bread

and jam for every meal, because HoWang wouldn't allow us anything better, and it all tasted of

pig,Chinese pig. I've worked for this, I've sweated and I've starved for this, line on line and month after

month. And now I've got it I am going to make the most of it while it lasts. Let them paythey've no

'What does Your Majesty please to want? You can't smoke more than you do; you won't drink; you're a gross

feeder; and you dress in the dark, by the look of you. You wouldn't keep a horse the other day when I

suggested, because, you said, it might fall lame, and whenever you cross the street you take a hansom. Even

you are not foolish enough to suppose that theatres and all the live things you can by thereabouts mean Life.

Providence has sent me nuts while I have teeth to crack 'em with. I haven't yet found the nut I wish to crack,

'With no work to do, nobody to worry us, and nobody to compete with? You would be unfit to speak to in a

week. Besides, I shouldn't go. I don't care to profit by the price of a man's soul,for that's what it would

'Don't see it. When I was on that Chinese pigboat, our captain got credit for saving about twentyfive

thousand very seasick little pigs, when our old tramp of a steamer fell foul of a timberjunk. Now, taking

'Oh, confound your parallels! Whenever I try to improve your soul, you always drag in some anecdote from

your very shady past. Pigs aren't the British public; and selfrespect is selfrespect the world over. Go out for

a walk and try to catch some selfrespect. And, I say, if the Nilghai comes up this evening can I show him

'Surely.' And Dick departed, to take counsel with himself in the rapidly gathering London fog.

Half an hour after he had left, the Nilghai laboured up the staircase. He was the chiefest, as he was the

youngest, of the war correspondents, and his experiences dated from the birth of the needlegun. Saving only

his ally, Keneu the Great War Eagle, there was no man higher in the craft than he, and he always opened his

conversation with the news that there would be trouble in the Balkans in the spring. Torpenhow laughed as he

'Never mind the trouble in the Balkans. Those little states are always screeching. You've heard about Dick's

'Yes; he has been called up to notoriety, hasn't he? I hope you keep him properly humble. He wants

'He does. He's beginning to take liberties with what he thinks is his reputation.'

'Already! By Jove, he has cheek! I don't know about his reputation, but he'll come a cropper if he tries that

'They never do when they first start off. What's that wreck on the ground there?'

'Specimen of his latest impertinence.' Torpenhow thrust the torn edges of the canvas together and showed the

'It's a chromo,' said he,'a chromolitholeomargarine fake! What possessed him to do it? And yet how

thoroughly he has caught the note that catches a public who think with their boots and read with their elbows!

The coldblooded insolence of the work almost saves it; but he mustn't go on with this. Hasn't he been

praised and cockered up too much? You know these people here have no sense of proportion. They'll call him

a second Detaille and a thirdhand Meissonier while his fashion lasts. It's windy diet for a colt.'

'I don't think it affects Dick much. You might as well call a young wolf a lion and expect him to take the

'Now he has thrown up war work, I suppose he doesn't see that the obligations of the service are just the

'Does he? I could undeceive him for his good, if there's any virtue in print. He wants the whiplash.'

'I've no scruples. He had the audacity to try to cut me out with a woman at Cairo once. I forgot that, but I

'You'll see when I have dealt with him. But, after all, what's the good? Leave him alone and he'll come home,

if he has any stuff in him, dragging or wagging his tail behind him. There's more in a week of life than in a

lively weekly. None the less I'll slate him. I'll slate him ponderously in the Cataclysm.'

'Good luck to you; but I fancy nothing short of a crowbar would make Dick wince. His soul seems to have

'Matter of temper,' said the Nilghai. 'It's the same with horses. Some you wallop and they work, some you

wallop and they jib, and some you wallop and they go out for a walk with their hands in their pockets.'

'That's exactly what Dick has done,' said Torpenhow. 'Wait till he comes back. In the meantime, you can

begin your slating here. I'll show you some of his last and worst work in his studio.'

Dick had instinctively sought running water for a comfort to his mood of mind. He was leaning over the

Embankment wall, watching the rush of the Thames through the arches of Westminster Bridge. He began by

thinking of Torpenhow's advice, but, as of custom, lost himself in the study of the faces flocking past. Some

had death written on their features, and Dick marvelled that they could laugh. Others, clumsy and

coarsebuilt for the most part, were alight with love; others were merely drawn and lined with work; but

there was something, Dick knew, to be made out of them all. The poor at least should suffer that he might

learn, and the rich should pay for the output of his learning. Thus his credit in the world and his cash balance

at the bank would be increased. So much the better for him. He had suffered. Now he would take toll of the

The fog was driven apart for a moment, and the sun shone, a bloodred wafer, on the water. Dick watched

the spot till he heard the voice of the tide between the piers die down like the wash of the sea at low tide. A

and a shift of the same wind that had opened the fog drove across Dick's face the black smoke of a

riversteamer at her berth below the wall. He was blinded for the moment, then spun round and found

There was no mistaking. The years had turned the child to a woman, but they had not altered the darkgray

eyes, the thin scarlet lips, or the firmly modelled mouth and chin; and, that all should be as it was of old, she

Since the human soul is finite and not in the least under its own command, Dick, advancing, said 'Halloo!'

after the manner of schoolboys, and Maisie answered, 'Oh, Dick, is that you?' Then, against his will, and

before the brain newly released from considerations of the cash balance had time to dictate to the nerves,

every pulse of Dick's body throbbed furiously and his palate dried in his mouth. The fog shut down again,

and Maisie's face was pearlwhite through it. No word was spoken, but Dick fell into step at her side, and the

two paced the Embankment together, keeping the step as perfectly as in their afternoon excursions to the

'He died, Dick. Not cartridges; overeating. He was always greedy. Isn't it funny?'

John's Wood, the big studio, then I pepperpotted,I mean I went to the National,and now I'm working

'No; he has his teaching studio in VitrysurMarne. I work with him in the summer, and I live in London in

'Now and again, but not often. There is my 'bus. I must take it or lose half an hour. Goodbye, Dick.'

'Goodbye, Maisie. Won't you tell me where you live? I must see you again; and perhaps I could help you.

'I may be in the Park tomorrow, if there is no working light. I walk from the Marble Arch down and back

again; that is my little excursion. But of course I shall see you again.' She stepped into the omnibus and was

Torpenhow and the Nilghai found him sitting on the steps to the stgudio door, repeating the phrase with an

'You'll be more damned when I'm done with you,' said the Nilghai, upheaving his bulk from behind

Torpenhow's shoulder and waving a sheaf of halfdry manuscript. 'Dick, it is of common report that you are

'Halloo, Nilghai. Back again? How are the Balkans and all the little Balkans? One side of your face is out of

'Never mind that. I am commissioned to smite you in print. Torpenhow refuses from false delicacy. I've been

'Oho! that's it, is it? If you think you can slate me, you're wrong. You can only describe, and you need as

much room to turn in, on paper, as a P. and O. cargoboat. But continue, and be swift. I'm going to bed.'

'H'm! h'm! h'm! The first part only deals with your pictures. Here's the peroration: "For work done without

conviction, for power wasted on trivialities, for labour expended with levity for the deliberate purpose of

winning the easy applause of a fashiondriven public" 'That's "His Last Shot," second edition. Go on.'

'"public, there remains but one end,the oblivion that is preceded by toleration and cenotaphed with

'Wowwowwowwowwow!' said Dick, profanely. 'It's a clumsy ending and vile journalese, but it's

quite true. And yet,'he sprang to his feet and snatched at the manuscript,'you scarred, deboshed, battered

old gladiator! you're sent out when a war begins, to minister to the blind, brutal, British public's bestial thirst

for blood. They have no arenas now, but they must have special correspondents. You're a fat gladiator who

comes up through a trapdoor and talks of what he's seen. You stand on precisely the same level as an

energetic bishop, an affable actress, a devastating cyclone, ormine own sweet self. And you presume to

lecture me about my work! Nilghai, if it were worth while I'd caricature you in four papers!'

'As it is, I shall take this stuff and tear it smallso!' The manuscript fluttered in slips down the dark well of

said Dick; 'go home to your lonely little bed, and leave me in peace. I am about to turn in till tomorrow.'

'It shall be two in the morning, if I choose,' said Dick, backing to the studio door. 'I go to grapple with a

At eleven there was a kicking on the studio door. 'Is the Nilghai with you still?' said a voice from within.

'Then tell him he might have condensed the whole of his lumbering nonsense into an epigram: "Only the free

are bond, and only the bond are free." Tell him he's an idiot, Torp, and tell him I'm another.'

'Maybe; but I'm in no hurry. I've made a discovery. Torp, there's too much Ego in my Cosmos.'

'It came to me suddenly, all on my own account. Much too much Ego; and now I'm going to work.'

He turned over a few halffinished sketches, drummed on a new canvas, cleaned three brushes, set Binkie to

bite the toes of the lay figure, rattled through his collection of arms and accoutrements, and then went out

'This is positively indecent,' said Torpenhow, 'and the first time that Dick has ever broken up a light morning.

Perhaps he has found out that he has a soul, or an artistic temperament, or something equally valuable.

That comes of leaving him alone for a month. Perhaps he has been going out of evenings. I must look to this.'

He rang for the baldheaded old housekeeper, whom nothing could astonish or annoy.

'Never laid 'is dressclothes out once, sir, all the time. Mostly 'e dined in; but 'e brought some most

remarkable young gentlemen up 'ere after theatres once or twice. Remarkable fancy they was. You gentlemen

on the top floor does very much as you likes, but it do seem to me, sir, droppin' a walkin'stick down five

flights o' stairs an' then goin' down four abreast to pick it up again at halfpast two in the mornin', singin'

"Bring back the whiskey, Willie darlin,'"not once or twice, but scores o' times,isn't charity to the other

'Of course! of course! I'm afraid the top floor isn't the quietest in the house.'

'I make no complaints, sir. I have spoke to Mr. Heldar friendly, an' he laughed, an' did me a picture of the

missis that is as good as a coloured print. It 'asn't the high shine of a photograph, but what I say is, "Never

look a gifthorse in the mouth." Mr. Heldar's dressclothes 'aven't been on him for weeks.'

'Then it's all right,' said Torpenhow to himself. 'Orgies are healthy, and Dick has a head of his own, but when

it comes to women making eyes I'm not so certain,Binkie, never you be a man, little dorglums. They're

Dick had turned northward across the Park, but he was walking in the spirit on the mudflats with Maisie. He

laughed aloud as he remembered the day when he had decked Amomma's horns with the hamfrills, and

Maisie, white with rage, had cuffed him. How long those four years seemed in review, and how closely

Maisie was connected with every hour of them! Storm across the sea, and Maisie in a gray dress on the

beach, sweeping her drenched hair out of her eyes and laughing at the homeward race of the fishingsmacks;

hot sunshine on the mudflats, and Maisie sniffing scornfully, with her chin in the air; Maisie flying before

the wind that threshed the foreshore and drove the sand like small shot about her ears; Maisie, very composed

and independent, telling lies to Mrs. Jennett while Dick supported her with coarser perjuries; Maisie picking

her way delicately from stone to stone, a pistol in her hand and her teeth firmset; and Maisie in a gray dress

sitting on the grass between the mouth of a cannon and a nodding yellow seapoppy. The pictures passed

Dick was perfectly happy with a quiet peace that was as new to his mind as it was foreign to his experiences.

It never occurred to him that there might be other calls upon his time than loafing across the Park in the

'There's a good working light now,' he said, watching his shadow placidly. 'Some poor devil ought to be

She was walking towards him from the Marble Arch, and he saw that no mannerism of her gait had been

changed. It was good to find her still Maisie, and, so to speak, his nextdoor neighbour. No greeting passed

'What are you doing out of your studio at this hour?' said Dick, as one who was entitled to ask.

'Idling. Just idling. I got angry with a chin and scraped it out. Then I left it in a little heap of paintchips and

'I don't like working over scraped paint when I'm doing flesh. The grain comes up woolly as the paint dries.'

'Not if you scrape properly.' Maisie waved her hand to illustrate her methods. There was a dab of paint on the

'By Jove, yes! It's worse than yours. I don't think we've much altered in anything. Let's see, though.' He

looked at Maisie critically. The pale blue haze of an autumn day crept between the treetrunks of the Park

and made a background for the gray dress, the black velvet toque above the black hair, and the resolute

'No, there's nothing changed. How good it is! D'you remember when I fastened your hair into the snap of a

'No one but myself. I never seem to get on with my work, and yet I try hard enough, and Kami says'

'"Continuez, mesdemoiselles. Continuez toujours, mes enfants." Kami is depressing. I beg your pardon.'

'Yes, that's what he says. He told me last summer that I was doing better and he'd let me exhibit this year.'

'Haven't you heard?' Dick's eyes opened. Was this thing possible? He cast about for some means of

conviction. They were not far from the Marble Arch. 'Come up Oxford Street a little and I'll show you.'

'Some reproduction of my work inside,' he said, with suppressed triumph. Never before had success tasted so

Maisie looked at the wild whirling rush of a fieldbattery going into action under fire. Two artillerymen

'They've chucked the off lead'orse' said one to the other. ''E's tore up awful, but they're makin' good time

with the others. That leaddriver drives better nor you, Tom. See 'ow cunnin' 'e's nursin' 'is 'orse.'

Dick watched Maisie's face and swelled with joyfine, rank, vulgar triumph. She was more interested in the

'Me,all me!' said Dick, placidly. 'Look at their faces. It hits 'em. They don't know what makes their eyes

They returned to the Park, and Dick delivered himself of the saga of his own doings, with all the arrogance of

From the beginning he told the tale, the III's flashing through the records as telegraphpoles fly past the

traveller. Maisie listened and nodded her head. The histories of strife and privation did not move her a

hair'sbreadth. At the end of each canto he would conclude, 'And that gave me some notion of handling

colour,' or light, or whatever it might be that he had set out to pursue and understand. He led her breathless

And in the floodtide of his exaltation there came upon him a great desire to pick up this maiden who nodded

her head and said, 'I understand. Go on,'to pick her up and carry her away with him, because she was

Maisie, and because she understood, and because she was his right, and a woman to be desired above all

Then he checked himself abruptly. 'And so I took all I wanted,' he said, 'and I had to fight for it. Now you

Maisie's tale was almost as gray as her dress. It covered years of patient toil backed by savage pride that

would not be broken thought dealers laughed, and fogs delayed work, and Kami was unkind and even

sarcastic, and girls in other studios were painfully polite. It had a few bright spots, in pictures accepted at

provincial exhibitions, but it wound up with the oft repeated wail, 'And so you see, Dick, I had no success,

Then pity filled Dick. Even thus had Maisie spoken when she could not hit the breakwater, half an hour

'Never mind,' he said. 'I'll tell you something, if you'll believe it.' The words were shaping themselves of their

own accord. 'The whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel, isn't worth one big yellow seapoppy below Fort

Maisie flushed a little. 'It's all very well for you to talk, but you've had the success and I haven't.'

'Let me talk, then. I know you'll understand. Maisie, dear, it sounds a bit absurd, but5 those ten years never

existed, and I've come back again. It really is just the same. Can't you see? You're alone now and I'm alone.

'I understand,' she said slowly. 'But I've got my work to do, and I must do it.'

'No, I couldn't. It's my work,mine,mine,mine! I've been alone all my life in myself, and I'm not going

to belong to anybody except myself. I remember things as well as you do, but that doesn't count. We were

babies then, and we didn't know what was before us. Dick, don't be selfish. I think I see my way to a little

'I beg your pardon, darling. It's my fault for speaking stupidly. I can't expect you to throw up all your life just

'I'm at your orders; forgive me.' Dick devoured the troubled little face with his eyes. There was triumph in

them, because he could not conceive that Maisie should refuse sooner or later to love him, since he loved her.

'It's wrong of me,' said Maisie, more slowly than before; 'it's wrong and selfish; but, oh, I've been so lonely!

No, you misunderstand. Now I've seen you again,it's absurd, but I want to keep you in my life.'

'We don't; but you always understood me, and there is so much in my work that you could help me in. You

'I do, I fancy, or else I don't know myself. Then you won't care to lose sight of me altogether, andyou want

'Yes; but remember, Dick, nothing will ever come of it. That's why I feel so selfish. Can't things stay as they

'You shall have it. But let's consider. I must see your pics first, and overhaul your sketches, and find out about

your tendencies. You should see what the papers say about my tendencies! Then I'll give you good advice,

'It's too good of you,much too good. Because you are consoling yourself with what will never happen, and

'I'm going into the matter with my eyes open. Moreover the Queen can do no wrong. It isn't your selfishness

'Very good: that's all I am. But, Maisie, you believe, don't you, that I love you? I don't want you to have any

'It's absurd, butI believe. I wish I could send you away before you get angry with me. Butbut the girl

that lives with me is redhaired, and an impressionist, and all our notions clash.'

'So do ours, I think. Never mind. Three months from today we shall be laughing at this together.'

Maisie shook her head mournfully. 'I knew you wouldn't understand, and it will only hurt you more when you

They stood up and faced each other for a moment. The fog was gathering, and it stifled the roar of the traffic

of London beyond the railings. Dick brought all his painfully acquired knowledge of faces to bear on the

'It's the same Maisie, and it's the same me,' he said. 'We've both nice little wills of our own, and one or other

of us has to be broken. Now about the future. I must come and see your pictures some day,I suppose when

'Sundays are my best times. You must come on Sundays. There are such heaps of things I want to talk about

'Try to find out before next Sunday what I am,' said Dick. 'Don't take my word for anything I've told you.

Maisie stole away like a little gray mouse. Dick watched her till she was out of sight, but he did not hear her

say to herself, very soberly, 'I'm a wretch,a horrid, selfish wretch. But it's Dick, and Dick will understand.'

No one has yet explained what actually happens when an irresistible force meets the immovable post, though

many have thought deeply, even as Dick thought. He tried to assure himself that Maisie would be led in a few

weeks by his mere presence and discourse to a better way of thinking. Then he remembered much too

'If I know anything of heads,' he said, 'there's everything in that face but love. I shall have to put that in

myself; and that chin and mouth won't be won for nothing. But she's right. She knows what she wants, and

she's going to get it. What insolence! Me! Of all the people in the wide world, to use me! But then she's

Maisie. There's no getting over that fact; and it's good to see her again. This business must have been

simmering at the back of my head for years. . . . She'll use me as I used Binat at Port Said.

She's quite right. It will hurt a little. I shall have to see her every Sunday,like a young man courting a

housemaid. She's sure to come around; and yetthat mouth isn't a yielding mouth. I shall be wanting to kiss

her all the time, and I shall have to look at her pictures,I don't even know what sort of work she does

yet,and I shall have to talk about Art,Woman's Art! Therefore, particularly and perpetually, damn all

varieties of Art. It did me a good turn once, and now it's in my way. I'll go home and do some Art.'

Halfway to the studio, Dick was smitten with a terrible thought. The figure of a solitary woman in the fog

'She's all alone in London, with a redhaired impressionist girl, who probably has the digestion of an ostrich.

Maisie's a bilious little body. They'll eat like lone women,meals at all hours, and tea with all meals. I

remember how the students in Paris used to pig along. She may fall ill at any minute, and I shan't be able to

Torpenhow entered the studio at dusk, and looked at Dick with eyes full of the austere love that springs up

between men who have tugged at the same oar together and are yoked by custom and use and the intimacies

of toil. This is a good love, and, since it allows, and even encourages, strife, recrimination, and brutal

sincerity, does not die, but grows, and is proof against any absence and evil conduct.

Dick was silent after he handed Torpenhow the filled pipe of council. He thought of Maisie and her possible

needs. It was a new thing to think of anybody but Torpenhow, who could think for himself. Here at last was

an outlet for that cash balance. He could adorn Maisie barbarically with jewelry,a thick gold necklace

round that little neck, bracelets upon the rounded arms, and rings of price upon her hands,thie cool,

temperate, ringless hands that he had taken between his own. It was an absurd thought, for Maisie would not

even allow him to put one ring on one finger, and she would laugh at golden trappings. It would be better to

sit with her quietly in the dusk, his arm around her neck and her face on his shoulder, as befitted husband and

wife. Torpenhow's boots creaked that night, and his strong voice jarred. Dick's brows contracted and he

murmured an evil word because he had taken all his success as a right and part payment for past discomfort,

and now he was checked in his stride by a woman who admitted all the success and did not instantly care for

'I say, old man,' said Torpenhow, who had made one or two vain attempts at conversation, 'I haven't put your

'The truly healthy man doesn't know he has a liver. I'm only a bit worried about things in general. I suppose

'The truly healthy man doesn't know he has a soul. What business have you with luxuries of that kind?'

'It came of itself. Who's the man that says that we're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of

'He's right, whoever he is,except about the misunderstanding. I don't think we could misunderstand each

The blue smoke curled back from the ceiling in clouds. Then Torpenhow, insinuatingly 'Dick, is it a

'Be hanged if it's anything remotely resembling a woman; and if you begin to talk like that, I'll hire a

redbrick studio with white paint trimmings, and begonias and petunias and blue Hungarias to play among

threeandsixpenny potpalms, and I'll mount all my pics in anilinedye plush plasters, and I'll invite every

woman who maunders over what her guidebooks tell her is Art, and you shall receive 'em, Torp,in a

snuffbrown velvet coat with yellow trousers and an orange tie. You'll like that?'

'Too thin, Dick. A better man than you once denied with cursing and swearing. You've overdone it, just as he

did. It's no business of mine, of course, but it's comforting to think that somewhere under the stars there's

saving up for you a tremendous thrashing. Whether it'll come from heaven or earth, I don't know, but it's

Dick shivered. 'All right,' said he. 'When this island is disintegrated, it will call for you.'

SOME weeks later, on a very foggy Sunday, Dick was returning across the Park to his studio. 'This,' he said,

'is evidently the thrashing that Torp meant. It hurts more than I expected; but the Queen can do no wrong; and

He had just finished a Sunday visit to Maisie,always under the green eyes of the redhaired impressionist

girl, whom he learned to hate at sight,and was tingling with a keen sense of shame. Sunday after Sunday,

putting on his best clothes, he had walked over to the untidy house north of the Park, first to see Maisie's

pictures, and then to criticise and advise upon them as he realised that they were productions on which advice

would not be wasted. Sunday after Sunday, and his love grew with each visit, he had been compelled to cram

his heart back from between his lips when it prompted him to kiss Maisie several times and very much

indeed. Sunday after Sunday, the head above the heart had warned him that Maisie was not yet attainable, and

that it would be better to talk as connectedly as possible upon the mysteries of the craft that was all in all to

her. Therefore it was his fate to endure weekly torture in the studio built out over the clammy back garden of

a frail stuffy little villa where nothing was ever in its right place and nobody every called,to endure and to

watch Maisie moving to and fro with the teacups. He abhorred tea, but, since it gave him a little longer time

in her presence, he drank it devoutly, and the redhaired girl sat in an untidy heap and eyed him without

Once, and only once, when she had left the studio, Maisie showed him an album that held a few poor cuttings

from provincial papers,the briefest of hurried notes on some of her pictures sent to outlying exhibitions.

Dick stooped and kissed the paintsmudged thumb on the open page. 'Oh, my love, my love,' he muttered, 'do

Then Dick, moved by no respect for his public and a very deep regard for the maiden, did deliberately

propose, in order to secure more of these coveted cuttings, that he should paint a picture which Maisie should

'That's childish,' said Maisie, 'and I didn't think it of you. It must be my work. Mine,mine,mine!'

'Go and design decorative medallions for rich brewers' houses. You are thoroughly good at that.' Dick was

'Better things than medallions, Dick,' was the answer, in tones that recalled a grayeyed atom's fearless

speech to Mrs. Jennett. Dick would have abased himself utterly, but that other girl trailed in.

Next Sunday he laid at Maisie's feet small gifts of pencils that could almost draw of themselves and colours

in whose permanence he believed, and he was ostentatiously attentive to the work in hand. It demanded,

Torpenhow's hair would have stood on end had he heard the fluency with which Dick preached his own

A month before, Dick would have been equally astonished; but it was Maisie's will and pleasure, and he

dragged his words together to make plain to her comprehension all that had been hidden to himself of the

whys and wherefores of work. There is not the least difficulty in doing a thing if you only know how to do it;

'I could put this right if I had a brush in my hand,' said Dick, despairingly, over the modelling of a chin that

Maisie complained would not 'look flesh,'it was the same chin that she had scraped out with the palette

knife,'but I find it almost impossible to teach you. There's a queer grin, Dutch touch about your painting

that I like; but I've a notion that you're weak in drawing. You foreshorten as though you never used the

model, and you've caught Kami's pasty way of dealing with flesh in shadow. Then, again, though you don't

know it yourself, you shirk hard work. Suppose you spend some of your time on line lone. Line doesn't allow

of shirking. Oils do, and three square inches of flashy, tricky stuff in the corner of a pic sometimes carry a

bad thing off,as I know. That's immoral. Do linework for a little while, and then I can tell more about

'I know,' said Dick. 'You want to do your fancy heads with a bunch of flowers at the base of the neck to hide

bad modelling.' The redhaired girl laughed a little. 'You want to do landscapes with cattle kneedeep in

grass to hide bad drawing. You want to do a great deal more than you can do. You have sense of colour, but

you want form. Colour's a gift,put it aside and think no more about it,but form you can be drilled into.

Now, all your fancy headsand some of them are very goodwill keep you exactly where you are. With

'You mustn't mind what other people do. If their souls were your soul, it would be different. You stand and

fall by your own work, remember, and it's waste of time to think of any one else in this battle.'

Dick paused, and the longing that had been so resolutely put away came back into his eyes. He looked at

Maisie, and the look asked as plainly as words, Was it not time to leave all this barren wilderness of canvas

Maisie assented to the new programme of schooling so adorably that Dick could hardly restrain himself from

picking her up then and there and carrying her off to the nearest registrar's office. It was the implicit

obedience to the spoken word and the blank indifference to the unspoken desire that baffled and buffeted his

soul. He held authority in that house,authority limited, indeed, to onehalf of one afternoon in seven, but

very real while it lasted. Maisie had learned to appeal to him on many subjects, from the proper packing of

pictures to the condition of a smoky chimney. The redhaired girl never consulted him about anything.

On the other hand, she accepted his appearances without protest, and watched him always. He discovered that

the meals of the establishment were irregular and fragmentary. They depended chiefly on tea, pickles, and

biscuit, as he had suspected from the beginning. The girls were supposed to market week and week about, but

they lived, with the help of a charwoman, as casually as the young ravens. Maisie spent most of her income

on models, and the other girl revelled in apparatus as refined as her work was rough. Armed with knowledge,

dearbought from the Docks, Dick warned Maisie that the end of semistarvation meant the crippling of

Maisie took the warning, and gave more thought to what she ate and drank. When his trouble returned upon

him, as it generally did in the long winter twilights, the remembrance of that little act of domestic authority

and his coercion with a hearthbrush of the smoky drawingroom chimney stung Dick like a whiplash.

He conceived that this memory would be the extreme of his sufferings, till one Sunday, the redhaired girl

announced that she would make a study of Dick's head, and that he would be good enough to sit still,

andquite as an afterthoughtlook at Maisie. He sat, because he could not well refuse, and for the space of

half an hour he reflected on all the people in the past whom he had laid open for the purposes of his own

craft. He remembered Binat most distinctly,that Binat who had once been an artist and talked about

It was the merest monochrome roughing in of a head, but it presented the dumb waiting, the longing, and,

'My price is too high, but I dare say you'll be as grateful if' The wet sketch, fluttered from the girl's hand

and fell into the ashes of the studio stove. When she picked it up it was hopelessly smudged.

'Thank you,' said Dick under his breath to the redhaired girl, and he removed himself swiftly.

'What nonsense? I knew Dick's very fond of me, but he had his work to do, and I have mine.'

'Yes, he is fond of you, and I think he knows there is something in impressionism, after all. Maisie, can't you

'Nothing; only, I know that if I could get any man to look at me as that man looks at you, I'dI don't know

She was not altogether correct. Dick's hatred was tempered with gratitude for a few moments, and then he

forgot the girl entirely. Only the sense of shame remained, and he was nursing it across the Park in the fog.

'There'll be an explosion one of these days,' he said wrathfully. 'But it isn't Maisie's fault; she's right, quite

right, as far as she knows, and I can't blame her. This business has been going on for three months nearly.

Three months!and it cost me ten years' knocking about to get at the notion, the merest raw notion, of my

work. That's true; but then I didn't have pins, drawingpins, and paletteknives, stuck into me every Sunday.

Oh, my little darling, if ever I break you, somebody will have a very bad time of it. No, she won't. I'd be as

big a fool about her as I am now. I'll poison that redhaired girl on my weddingday,she's

Torpenhow had been moved to lecture Dick more than once lately on the sin of levity, and Dick and listened

and replied not a word. In the weeks between the first few Sundays of his discipline he had flung himself

savagely into his work, resolved that Maisie should at least know the full stretch of his powers. Then he had

taught Maisie that she must not pay the least attention to any work outside her own, and Maisie had obeyed

him all too well. She took his counsels, but was not interested in his pictures.

'Your things smell of tobacco and blood,' she said once. 'Can't you do anything except soldiers?'

'I could do a head of you that would startle you,' thought Dick,this was before the redhaired girl had

brought him under the guillotine,but he only said, 'I am very sorry,' and harrowed Torpenhow's soul that

evening with blasphemies against Art. Later, insensibly and to a large extent against his own will, he ceased

For Maisie's sake, and to soothe the selfrespect that it seemed to him he lost each Sunday, he would not

consciously turn out bad stuff, but, since Maisie did not care even for his best, it were better not to do

anything at all save wait and mark time between Sunday and Sunday. Torpenhow was disgusted as the weeks

went by fruitless, and then attacked him one Sunday evening when Dick felt utterly exhausted after three

biting selfrestraint in Maisie's presence. There was Language, and Torpenhow withdrew to consult the

'No. She may throw him out of gear and knock his work to pieces for a while. She may even turn up here

some day and make a scene on the staircase: one never knows. But until Dick speaks of his own accord you

'He'll get that knocked out of him in time. He must learn that he can't storm up and down the world with a

'I'd take any punishment that's in store for him if I could; but the worst of it is, no man can save his brother.'

'No, and the worser of it is, there is no discharge in this war. Dick must learn his lesson like the rest of us.

'That trouble is long coming. I wonder if we could drag Dick out there when it comes off?'

'Surely you aren't taking all the stuff in the papers seriously?' said the Nilghai. 'Your vogue will be ended in

less than six months,the public will know your touch and go on to something new,and where will you

'When you might be doing decent work among us out there? Nonsense! I shall go, the Keneu will be there,

Torp will be there, Cassavetti will be there, and the whole lot of us will be there, and we shall have as much

as ever we can do, with unlimited fighting and the chance for you of seeing things that would make the

'You prefer to stay here and imagine that all the world is gaping at your pictures? Just think how full an

average man's life is of his own pursuits and pleasures. When twenty thousand of him find time to look up

between mouthfuls and grunt something about something they aren't the least interested in, the net result is

called fame, reputation, or notoriety, according to the taste and fancy of the speller my lord.'

Heighho! I'm weary, dead weary, and virtue has gone out of me.' Dick dropped into a chair, and was fast

Torpenhow picked the pipe from the waistcoat where it was beginning to burn, and put a pillow behind the

head. 'We can't help; we can't help,' he said. 'It's a good ugly sort of old cocoanut, and I'm fond of it. There's

'Oh, here, no affection can stand this sort of thing. Wake up, Dick, and go and sleep somewhere else, if you

'When a cat has been out on the tiles all night,' said the Nilghai, in his beard, 'I notice that she usually sleeps

Dick staggered away rubbing his eyes and yawning. In the nightwatches he was overtaken with an idea, so

simple and so luminous that he wondered he had never conceived it before. It was full of craft. He would

seek Maisie on a weekday,would suggest an excursion, and would take her by train to Fort Keeling, over

'As a general rule,' he explained to his chinlathered reflection in the morning, 'it isn't safe to cross an old

trail twice. Things remind one of things, and a cold wind gets up, and you feel said; but this is an exception to

Fortunately, the redhaired girl was out shopping when he arrived, and Maisie in a paintspattered blouse

was warring with her canvas. She was not pleased to see him; for weekday visits were a stretch of the bond;

'I know you've been working too hard,' he concluded, with an air of authority. 'If you do that, you'll break

'Where?' said Maisie, wearily. She had been standing before her easel too long, and was very tired.

'Anywhere you please. We'll take a train tomorrow and see where it stops. We'll have lunch somewhere, and

'If there's a good working light tomorrow, I lose a day.' Maisie balanced the heavy white chestnut palette

Dick bit back an oath that was hurrying to his lips. He had not yet learned patience with the maiden to whom

'You'll lose ever so many more, dear, if you use every hour of working light. Overwork's only murderous

idleness. Don't be unreasonable. I'll call for you tomorrow after breakfast early.'

'No, I am not. I want you and nobody else. Besides, she hates me as much as I hate her. She won't care to

He strangled a wild desire to order a special train, but bought a great gray kangaroo cloak lined with glossy

'I'm going out for the day tomorrow with Dick,' said Maisie to the redhaired girl when the latter returned,

'He deserves it. I shall have the studio floor thoroughly scrubbed while you're away. It's very dirty.'

Maisie had enjoyed no sort of holiday for months and looked forward to the little excitement, but not without

'There's nobody nicer than Dick when he talks sensibly, she though, but I'm sure he'll be silly and worry me,

and I'm sure I can't tell him anything he'd like to hear. If he'd only be sensible, I should like him so much

Dick's eyes were full of joy when he made his appearance next morning and saw Maisie, grayulstered and

blackvelvethatted, standing in the hallway. Palaces of marble, and not sordid imitation of grained wood,

were surely the fittest background for such a divinity. The redhaired girl drew her into the studio for a

Maisie's eyebrows climbed to the top of her forehead; she was altogether unused to these demonstrations.

'Mind my hat,' she said, hurrying away, and ran down the steps to Dick waiting by the hansom.

'Are you quite warm enough! Are you sure you wouldn't like some more breakfast? Put the cloak over you

'I'm quite comf'y, thanks. Where are we going, Dick? Oh, do stop singing like that. People will think we're

'Let 'em think,if the exertion doesn't kill them. They don't know who we are, and I'm sure I don't care who

Maisie stared directly in front of her and did not reply. The wind of a keen clear winter morning had put

colour into her cheeks. Overhead, the creamyyellow smokeclouds were thinning away one by one against

a paleblue sky, and the improvident sparrows broke off from waterspout committees and cabrank cabals

The stopped at Victoria, and Dick sought tickets. For less than half the fraction of an instant it occurred to

Maisie, comfortably settled by the waitingroom fire, that it was much more pleasant to send a man to the

bookingoffice than to elbow one's own way through the crowd. Dick put her into a Pullman,solely on

account of the warmth there; and she regarded the extravagance with grave scandalised eyes as the train

The name of a wellremembered station flashed by, towards the end of the run, and Maisie was delighted.

'Well, I thought you might like to see the place again. You haven't been here since the old times, have you?'

'No. I never cared to see Mrs. Jennett again; and she was all that was ever there.'

'Not quite. Look out a minute. There's the windmill above the potatofields; they haven't built villas there yet;

'She guessed. I jammed a stick under the door and told you that I was burying Amomma alive in the potatoes,

They laughed and leaned to look out, identifying ancient landmarks with many reminiscences. Dick fixed his

weather eye on the curve of Maisie's cheek, very near his own, and watched the blood rise under the clear

skin. He congratulated himself upon his cunning, and looked that the evening would bring him a great

When the train stopped they went out to look at an old town with new eyes. First, but from a distance, they

'Suppose she should come out now, what would you do?' said Dick, with mock terror.

Maisie made that face in the direction of the mean little villa, and Dick laughed.

'"Maisie, you run in at once, and learn the collect, gospel, and epistle for the next three Sundays. After all I've

taught you, too, and three helps every Sunday at dinner! Dick's always leading you into mischief. If you aren't

'"Try to behave like one,"' said Dick, promptly. 'Quite right. Now we'll get some lunch and go on to Fort

They turned in the direction of the sea through unaltered streets, and the influence of old things lay upon

them. Presently they passed a confectioner's shop much considered in the days when their joint

'Only three; and if you think you're going to have two of 'em to buy peppermints with, you're wrong. She says

Again they laughed, and again the colour came into Maisie's cheeks as the blood boiled through Dick's heart.

After a large lunch they went down to the beach and to Fort Keeling across the waste, windbitten land that

no builder had thought it worth his while to defile. The winter breeze came in from the sea and sang about

She looked round cautiously, and with a laugh set off, swiftly as the ulster allowed, till she was out of breath.

'Old age, dear. This it is to get fat and sleek in town. When I wished to pull you hair you generally ran for

three miles, shrieking at the top of your voice. I ought to know, because those shrieks of yours were meant to

Torpenhow had gathered from Mr. Beeton that Dick, properly dressed and shaved, had left the house at

halfpast eight in the morning with a travellingrug over his arm. The Nilghai rolled in at midday for chess

'Oh, the everlasting Dick, I suppose! You fuss over him like a hen with one chick. Let him run riot if he

thinks it'll amuse him. You can whip a young pup off feather, but you can't whip a young man.'

'He got up and went out at eight this morning,got up in the middle of the night, by Jove! a thing he never

Even then, remember, we had to kick him out of his blankets before the fight began at ElMaghrib. It's

'It looks odd; but maybe he's decided to buy a horse at last. He might get up for that, mightn't he?'

'Buy a blazing wheelbarrow! He'd have told us if there was a horse in the wind. It's a girl.'

'Dick has some sense of humour, if you haven't. Who gets up in the gray dawn to call on another man's wife?

'Let it be a girl, then. She may teach him that there's somebody else in the world besides himself.'

'She'll spoil his hand. She'll waste his time, and she'll marry him, and ruin his work for ever. He'll be a

respectable married man before we can stop him, andhe'll ever go on the long trail again.'

'All quite possible, but the earth won't spin the other way when that happens. . . . No! ho! I'd give something

to see Dick "go wooing with the boys." Don't worry about it. These things be with Allah, and we can only

The redhaired girl was lying down in her own room, staring at the ceiling. The footsteps of people on the

pavement sounded, as they grew indistinct in the distance, like a manytimesrepeated kiss that was all one

long kiss. Her hands were by her side, and they opened and shut savagely from time to time.

The charwoman in charge of the scrubbing of the studio knocked at her door: 'Beg y' pardon, miss, but in

cleanin' of a floor there's two, not to say three, kind of soap, which is yaller, an' mottled, an' disinfectink.

Now, jist before I took my pail into the passage I though it would be pre'aps jest as well if I was to come up

'ere an' ask you what sort of soap you was wishful that I should use on them boards. The yaller soap,

There was nothing in the speech to have caused the paroxysm of fury that drove the redhaired girl into the

middle of the room, almost shouting 'Do you suppose I care what you use? Any kind will do!any kind!'

The woman fled, and the redhaired girl looked at her own reflection in the glass for an instant and covered

her face with her hands. It was as though she had shouted some shameless secret aloud.

THE SEA had not changed. Its waters were low on the mudbanks, and the Marazion Bellbuoy clanked and

swung in the tideway. On the white beachsand dried stumps of seapoppy shivered and chattered.

'Let's be thankful that we have as much as we have. I don't believe they've mounted a single new gun on the

They came to the glacis of Fort Keeling, and sat down in a nook sheltered from the wind under the tarred

For a long time both were silent. Then Dick took Maisie's hand and called her by her name.

'No!' between clenched teeth. 'I'dI'd tell you if it did; but it doesn't, Oh, Dick, please be sensible.'

Maisie rested her chin on her hand, and, still regarding the sea, spoke hurriedly 'I know what you want

perfectly well, but I can't give it to you, Dick. It isn't my fault; indeed, it isn't. If I felt that I could care for any

one But I don't feel that I care. I simply don't understand what the feeling means.'

'You've been very good to me, Dickie; and the only way I can pay you back is by speaking the truth. I daren't

'Becausebecause I take everything that you give me and I give you nothing in return. It's mean and selfish

'Understand once for all, then, that I can manage my own affairs, and if I choose to do anything you aren't to

'How can I help myself? If you find me alone for a minute you are always talking about it; and when you

'Great goodness!' said Dick, nearly jumping to his feet. 'Speak the truth now, Maisie, if you never speak it

'Thank you. The other thing is fatal. But you must learn to forgive a man when he's in love. He's always a

Maisie did not consider the last question worth answering, and Dick was forced to repeat it.

'There were other men, of course. They always worried just when I was in the middle of my work, and

'At first; and they couldn't understand why I didn't care. And they used to praise my pictures; and I thought

they meant it. I used to be proud of the praise, and tell Kami, andI shall never forgetonce Kami laughed

Dick, tell me honestly what you think of my pictures generally,of everything of mine that you've seen.'

'"Honest, honest, and honest over!"' quoted Dick from a catchword of long ago. 'Tell me what Kami always

'How dare you tell me a fib like that? Remember, I was under Kami for two years. I know exactly what he

'It's worse; it's a halftruth. Kami says, when he puts his head on one side,so,"Il y a du sentiment, mais

il n'y a pas de parti pris."' He rolled the r threateningly, as Kami used to do.

'Certainly he is.' Dick admitted that two people in the world could do and say no wrong. Kami was the man.

'I'm sorry, but you asked me to speak the truth. Besides, I love you too much to pretend about your work. It's

strong, it's patient sometimes,not always,and sometimes there's power in it, but there's no special reason

'There's no special reason why anything in the world should ever be done. You know that as well as I do. I

'Don't quote Kami to me. I want to know what you think. My work's bad, to begin with.'

'That it most certainly is not. You're a workwoman, darling, to your bootheels, and I respect you for that.'

'No, dear. You see, you are more to me than any one else. Put this cloak thing round you, or you'll get

Maisie wrapped herself in the soft marten skins, turning the gray kangaroo fur to the outside.

'Just because you try. Don't you understand, darling? Good work has nothing to do withdoesn't belong

'Wait a minute. All we can do is to learn how to do our work, to be masters of our materials instead of

'Everything else comes from outside ourselves. Very good. If we sit down quietly to work out notions that are

sent to us, we may or we may not do something that isn't bad. A great deal depends on being master of the

bricks and mortar of the trade. But the instant we begin to think about success and the effect of our workto

play with one eye on the gallerywe lose power and touch and everything else. At least that's how I have

found it. Instead of being quiet and giving every power you possess to your work, you're fretting over

'It's so easy for you to talk in that way. People like what you do. Don't you ever think about the gallery?'

'Much too often; but I'm always punished for it by loss of power. It's as simple as the Rule of Three. If we

make light of our work by using it for our own ends, our work will make light of us, and, as we're the weaker,

'Of course; but, whether you realise it or not, you give two strokes for yourself to one for your work. It isn't

your fault, darling. I do exactly the same thing, and know that I'm doing it. Most of the French schools, and

all the schools here, drive the students to work for their own credit, and for the sake of their pride. I was told

that all the world was interested in my work, and everybody at Kami's talked turpentine, and I honestly

believed that the world needed elevating and influencing, and all manner of impertinences, by my brushes.

By Jove, I actually believed that! When my little head was bursting with a notion that I couldn't handle

because I hadn't sufficient knowledge of my craft, I used to run about wondering at my own magnificence

'Very seldom with malice aforethought, darling. And when it's done it's such a tiny thing, and the world's so

big, and all but a millionth part of it doesn't care. Maisie, come with me and I'll show you something of the

size of the world. One can no more avoid working than eating,that goes on by itself,but try to see what

you are working for. I know such little heavens that I could take you to,islands tucked away under the

You sight them after weeks of crashing through water as black as black marble because it's so deep, and you

sit in the forechains day after day and see the sun rise almost afraid because the sea's so lonely.'

'The sun, of course. And there are noises under the sea, and sounds overhead in a clear sky. Then you find

your island alive with hot moist orchids that make mouths at you and can do everything except talk.

There's a waterfall in it three hundred feet high, just like a sliver of green jade laced with silver; and millions

of wild bees live up in the rocks; and you can hear the fat cocoanuts falling from the palms; and you order an

ivorywhite servant to sling you a long yellow hammock with tassels on it like ripe maize, and you put up

'Certainly. One must do something always. You hang your canvas up in a palm tree and let the parrots

criticise. When the scuffle you heave a ripe custardapple at them, and it bursts in a lather of cream. There

'What do you think of a big, red, dead city built of red sandstone, with raw green aloes growing between the

stones, lying out neglected on honeycoloured sands? There are forty dead kings there, Maisie, each in a

gorgeous tomb finer than all the others. You look at the palaces and streets and shops and tanks, and think

that men must live there, till you find a wee gray squirrel rubbing its nose all alone in the marketplace, and a

jewelled peacock struts out of a carved doorway and spreads its tail against a marble screen as fine pierced as

pointlace. Then a monkeya little black monkeywalks through the main square to get a drink from a

tank forty feet deep. He slides down the creepers to the water's edge, and a friend holds him by the tail, in

'I have been there and seen. Then evening comes, and the lights change till it's just as though you stood in the

heart of a kingopal. A little before sundown, as punctually as clockwork, a big bristly wild boar, with all his

family following, trots through the city gate, churning the foam on his tusks. You climb on the shoulder of a

blind black stone god and watch that pig choose himself a palace for the night and stump in wagging his tail.

Then the nightwind gets up, and the sands move, and you hear the desert outside the city singing, "Now I

lay me down to sleep," and everything is dark till the moon rises. Maisie, darling, come with me and see what

the world is really like. It's very lovely, and it's very horrible,but I won't let you see anything horrid,and

it doesn't care your life or mine for pictures or anything else except doing its own work and making love.

Come, and I'll show you how to brew sangaree, and sling a hammock, andoh, thousands of things, and

you'll see for yourself what colour means, and we'll find out together what love means, and then, maybe, we

'How can you do anything until you have seen everything, or as much as you can? And besides, darling, I

love you. Come along with me. You have no business here; you don't belong to this place; you're half a

gipsy,your face tells that; and Ieven the smell of open water makes me restless. Come across the sea and

He had risen to his feet, and stood in the shadow of the gun, looking down at the girl. The very short winter

afternoon had worn away, and, before they knew, the winter moon was walking the untroubled sea. Long

ruled lines of silver showed where a ripple of the rising tide was turning over the mudbanks. The wind had

dropped, and in the intense stillness they could hear a donkey cropping the frosty grass many yards away. A

Dick was so angry at this sudden wrench to his pleadings that he could not trust himself to speak, and in this

silence caught the sound. Maisie from her seat under the gun watched him with a certain amount of fear.

She wished so much that he would be sensible and cease to worry her with oversea emotion that she both

could and could not understand. She was not prepared, however, for the change in his face as he listened.

'It's a steamer,' he said,'a twinscrew steamer, by the beat. I can't make her out, but she must be standing

very close inshore. Ah!' as the red of a rocket streaked the haze, 'she's standing in to signal before she clears

Dick's eyes were turned to the sea. 'Wreck! What nonsense! She's only reporting herself. Red rocket

'It's the signal of the Cross Keys Line running to Australia. I wonder which steamer it is.' The note of his

voice had changed; he seemed to be talking to himself, and Maisie did not approve of it. The moonlight broke

the haze for a moment, touching the black sides of a long steamer working down Channel. 'Four masts and

three funnelsshe's in deep draught, too. That must be the Barralong, or the Bhutia. No, the Bhutia has a

clopper bow. It's the Barralong, to Australia. She'll lift the Southern Cross in a week,lucky old tub!oh,

He stared intently, and moved up the slope of the fort to get a better view, but the mist on the sea thickened

again, and the beating of the screws grew fainter. Maisie called to him a little angrily, and he returned, still

keeping his eyes to seaward. 'Have you ever seen the Southern Cross blazing right over your head?' he asked.

'No,' she said shortly, 'and I don't want to. If you think it's so lovely, why don't you go and see it yourself?'

She raised her face from the soft blackness of the marten skins about her throat, and her eyes shone like

diamonds. The moonlight on the gray kangaroo fur turned it to frosted silver of the coldest.

'By Jove, Maisie, you look like a little heathen idol tucked up there.' The eyes showed that they did not

appreciate the compliment. 'I'm sorry,' he continued. 'The Southern Cross isn't worth looking at unless

'Dick,' she said quietly, 'suppose I were to come to you now,be quiet a minute,just as I am, and caring

'I never had a brother. Suppose I said, "Take me to those places, and in time, perhaps, I might really care for

'Send you straight back to where you came from, in a cab. No, I wouldn't; I'd let you walk. But you couldn't

do it, dear. And I wouldn't run the risk. You're worth waiting for till you can come without reservation.'

'It's so ungrateful of me, butbut, though I know you care for me, and I like to have you with me, I'dI'd

'My poor little darling! I know that state of mind. It doesn't lead to good work.'

'I'm not exactly flattered,I had guessed as much before,but I'm not angry. I'm sorry for you. Surely you

'You've no right to patronise me! I only want what I have worked for so long. It came to you without any

A murmur of dissent from Maisie. He went on 'And I know by what you have just said that you're on the

wrong road to success. It isn't got at by sacrificing other people,I've had that much knocked into me; you

must sacrifice yourself, and live under orders, and never think for yourself, and never have real satisfaction in

your work except just at the beginning, when you're reaching out after a notion.'

'There's no question of belief or disbelief. That's the law, and you take it or refuse it as you please. I try to

obey, but I can't, and then my work turns bad on my hands. Under any circumstances, remember, fourfifths

of everybody's work must be bad. But the remnant is worth the trouble for it's own sake.'

'It's much too nice. But May I tell you something? It isn't a pretty tale, but you're so like a man that I

'Once when I was out in the Soudan I went over some ground that we had been fighting on for three days.

'I had been at work on a big doublesheet sketch, and I was wondering what people would think of it at

home. The sight of that field taught me a good deal. It looked just like a bed of horrible toadstools in all

colours, andI'd never seen men in bulk go back to their beginnings before. So I began to understand that

men and women were only material to work with, and that what they said or did was of no consequence. See?

Strictly speaking, you might just as well put your ear down to the palette to catch what your colours are

'Wait a minute. I said, strictly speaking. Unfortunately, everybody must be either a man or a woman.'

'In your case I don't. You aren't a woman. But ordinary people, Maisie, must behave and work as such. That's

what makes me so savage.' He hurled a pebble towards the sea as he spoke. 'I know that it is outside my

business to care what people say; I can see that it spoils my output if I listen to 'em; and yet, confound it

all,'another pebble flew seaward,'I can't help purring when I'm rubbed the right way. Even when I can

see on a man's forehead that he is lying his way through a clump of pretty speeches, those lies make me

'Then, belovedest,'Dick grinned,'I forget that I am the steward of these gifts, and I want to make that

man love and appreciate my work with a thick stick. It's too humiliating altogether; but I suppose even if one

were an angel and painted humans altogether from outside, one would lose in touch what one gained in grip.'

'Nor I. Buthave got orders: what can do? Are you strong enough to face it alone?'

'Let me help, darling. We can hold each other very tight and try to walk straight. We shall blunder horribly,

'I don't think we should get on together. We should be two of a trade, so we should never agree.'

'How I should like to meet the man who made that proverb! He lived in a cave and ate raw bear, I fancy. I'd

'I should be only half married to you. I should worry and fuss about my work, as I do now. Four days out of

'You talk as if no one else in the world had ever used a brush. D'you suppose that I don't know the feeling of

worry and bother and can'tgetatness? You're lucky if you only have it four days out of the seven. What

'Yes, but I could respect it. Another man might not. He might laugh at you. But there's no use talking about it.

The tide had nearly covered the mudbanks and twenty little ripples broke on the beach before Maisie chose

'I don't quite know, but in what you said about work and things; and then you're so patient. Yes, you're better

Dick considered rapidly the murkiness of an average man's life. There was nothing in the review to fill him

'Why,' said Maisie, making as though she had not noticed, 'can you see things that I can't? I don't believe

'If I've seen anything, God knows I couldn't have seen it but for you, and I know that I couldn't have said it

except to you. You seemed to make everything clear for a minute; but I don't practice what I preach. You

would help me. . . . There are only us two in the world for all purposes, andand you like to have me with

'Two years ago, when I first took the little house, I used to walk up and down the backgarden trying to cry. I

'I don't know; but I used to dream that I had broken down, and had no money, and was starving in London. I

'I know that fear. It's the most terrible of all. It wakes me up in the night sometimes. You oughtn't to know

'Very well. If any one comes to you and recommends a better investment,even if I should come to

you,don't you listen. Never shift the money for a minute, and never lend a penny of it,even to the

'The earth is full of men who'd sell their souls for three hundred a year; and women come and talk, and

borrow a fivepound note here and a tenpound note there; and a woman has no conscience in a money debt.

Stick to your money, Maisie, for there's nothing more ghastly in the world than poverty in London. It's scared

me. By Jove, it put the fear into me! And one oughtn't to be afraid of anything.'

To each man is appointed his particular dread,the terror that, if he does not fight against it, must cow him

even to the loss of his manhood. Dick's experience of the sordid misery of want had entered into the deeps of

him, and, lest he might find virtue too easy, that memory stood behind him, tempting to shame, when dealers

came to buy his wares. As the Nilghai quaked against his will at the still green water of a lake or a milldam,

as Torpenhow flinched before any white arm that could cut or stab and loathed himself for flinching, Dick

feared the poverty he had once tasted half in jest. His burden was heavier than the burdens of his companions.

'I shall never have enough,' he began, with vicious emphasis. Then, laughing, 'I shall always be threepence

'I carried a man's bag once from Liverpool Street Station to Blackfriar's Bridge. It was a sixpenny job,you

needn't laugh; indeed it was,and I wanted the money desperately. He only gave me threepence; and he

hadn't even the decency to pay in silver. Whatever money I make, I shall never get that odd threepence out of

This was not language befitting the man who had preached of the sanctity of work. It jarred on Maisie, who

preferred her payment in applause, which, since all men desire it, must be of he right. She hunted for her little

'There it is,' she said. 'I'll pay you, Dickie; and don't worry any more; it isn't worth while. Are you paid?'

'I am,' said the very human apostle of fair craft, taking the coin. 'I'm paid a thousand times, and we'll close

'I'm very cramped, and I'm feeling a little cold. Good gracious! the cloak is all white, and so is your

A light frost lay white on the shoulder of Dick's ulster. He, too, had forgotten the state of the weather. They

They ran inland across the waste to warm themselves, then turned to look at the glory of the full tide under

the moonlight and the intense black shadows of the furze bushes. It was an additional joy to Dick that Maisie

could see colour even as he saw it,could see the blue in the white of the mist, the violet that is in gray

palings, and all things else as they are,not of one hue, but a thousand. And the moonlight came into

Maisie's soul, so that she, usually reserved, chattered of herself and of the things she took interest in,of

Kami, wisest of teachers, and of the girls in the studio,of the Poles, who will kill themselves with

overwork if they are not checked; of the French, who talk at great length of much more than they will ever

accomplish; of the slovenly English, who toil hopelessly and cannot understand that inclination does not

imply power; of the Americans, whose rasping voices in the hush of a hot afternoon strain tensedrawn

nerves to breakingpoint, and whose suppers lead to indigestion; of tempestuous Russians, neither to hold

nor to bind, who tell the girls ghoststories till the girls shriek; of stolid Germans, who come to learn one

thing, and, having mastered that much, stolidly go away and copy pictures for evermore. Dick listened

'Not steal. Attract is the word. Of course they do. I'm goodI only attract ultramarine; but there are students

Every colour is common property once it runs down,even though you do start it with a drop of oil. It

'I should like to attract some of your colours, Dick. Perhaps I might catch your success with them.'

'I mustn't say a bad word, but I should like to. What in the world, which you've just missed a lovely chance of

seeing, does success or want of success, or a threestoried success, matter compared with No, I won't

'What will you give me if I tell you a sure shortcut to everything you want,the trouble and the fuss and

'In the first place, you must never forget a meal because you happen to be at work. You forgot your lunch

twice last week,' said Dick, at a venture, for he knew with whom he was dealing.'

'That's bad enough. And you mustn't take a cup of tea and a biscuit in place of a regular dinner, because

'I never was more in earnest in my life. Oh, my love, my love, hasn't it dawned on you yet what you are to

me? Here's the whole earth in a conspiracy to give you a chill, or run over you, or drench you to the skin, or

cheat you out of your money, or let you die of overwork and underfeeding, and I haven't the mere right to

look after you. Why, I don't even know if you have sense enough to put on warm things when the weather's

'Dick, you're the most awful boy to talk toreally! How do you suppose I managed when you were away?'

'I wasn't here, and I didn't know. But now I'm back I'd give everything I have for the right of telling you to

'As Mrs. Jennett used to say, you're a trial, Maisie! You've been cooped up in the schools too long, and you

There aren't twelve hundred people in the world who understand pictures. The others pretend and don't care.

Remember, I've seen twelve hundred men dead in toadstoolbeds. It's only the voice of the tiniest little

fraction of people that makes success. The real world doesn't care a tinker'sdoesn't care a bit. For aught

'Poor Dick, I think. Do you believe while he's fighting for what's dearer than his life he wants to look at a

picture? And even if he did, and if all the world did, and a thousand million people rose up and shouted

hymns to my honour and glory, would that make up to me for the knowledge that you were out shopping in

the Edgware Road on a rainy day without an umbrella? Now we'll go to the station.'

Dick groaned aloud: 'Yes, I know what I said. My work is everything I have, or am, or hope to be, to me, and

I believe I've learnt the law that governs it; but I've some lingering sense of fun left,though you've nearly

knocked it out of me. I can just see that it isn't everything to all the world. Do what I say, and not what I do.'

Maisie was careful not to reopen debatable matters, and they returned to London joyously. The terminus

stopped Dick in the midst of an eloquent harangue on the beauties of exercise. He would buy Maisie a

horse,such a horse as never yet bowed head to bit,would stable it, with a companion, some twenty miles

from London, and Maisie, solely for her health's sake should ride with him twice or thrice a week.

'Now, who in all London tonight would have sufficient interest or audacity to call us two to account for

Maisie looked at the lamps, the fog, and the hideous turmoil. Dick was right; but horseflesh did not make for

'You're very nice sometimes, but you're very foolish more times. I'm not going to let you give me horses, or

take you out of your way tonight. I'll go home by myself. Only I want you to promise me something. You

won't think any more about that extra threepence, will you? Remember, you've been paid; and I won't allow

you to be spiteful and do bad work for a little thing like that. You can be so big that you mustn't be tiny.'

This was turning the tables with a vengeance. There remained only to put Maisie into her hansom.

'Goodbye,' she said simply. 'You'll come on Sunday. It has been a beautiful day, Dick. Why can't it be like

'Because love's like linework: you must go forward or backward; you can't stand still. By the way, go on

He turned to walk home, meditating. The day had brought him nothing that he hoped for, butsurely this

was worth many daysit had brought him nearer to Maisie. The end was only a question of time now, and

the prize well worth the waiting. By instinct, once more, he turned to the river.

'And she understood at once,' he said, looking at the water. 'She found out my pet besetting sin on the spot,

and paid it off. My God, how she understood! And she said I was better than she was! Better than she was!'

He laughed at the absurdity of the notion. 'I wonder if girls guess at onehalf a man's life. They can't,

orthey wouldn't marry us.' He took her gift out of his pocket, and considered it in the light of a miracle and

a pledge of the comprehension that, one day, would lead to perfect happiness. Meantime, Maisie was alone in

London, with none to save her from danger. And the packed wilderness was very full of danger.

Dick made his prayer to Fate disjointedly after the manner of the heathen as he threw the piece of silver into

the river. If any evil were to befal, let him bear the burden and let Maisie go unscathed, since the threepenny

piece was dearest to him of all his possessions. It was a small coin in itself, but Maisie had given it, and the

The drowning of the coin seemed to cut him free from thought of Maisie for the moment. He took himself off

the bridge and went whistling to his chambers with a strong yearning for some mantalk and tobacco after his

first experience of an entire day spent in the society of a woman. There was a stronger desire at his heart

when there rose before him an unsolicited vision of the Barralong dipping deep and sailing free for the

TORPENHOW was paging the last sheets of some manuscript, while the Nilghai, who had come for chess

and remained to talk tactics, was reading through the first part, commenting scornfully the while.

'It's picturesque enough and it's sketchy,' said he; 'but as a serious consideration of affairs in Eastern Europe,

'It's off my hands at any rate. . . . Thirtyseven, thirtyeight, thirtynine slips altogether, aren't there? That

should make between eleven and twelve pages of valuable misinformation. Heigho!' Torpenhow shuffled the

Young lambs to sell, young lambs to sell, If I'd as much money as I could tell, I never would cry, Young

Dick entered, selfconscious and a little defiant, but in the best of tempers with all the world.

'Work. Dickie, you behave as though the Bank of England were behind you. Here's Sunday, Monday, and

'The notions come and go, my childrenthey come and go like our 'baccy,' he answered, filling his pipe.

'Moreover,' he stooped to thrust a spill into the grate, 'Apollo does not always stretch his Oh, confound

'This is not the place to preach the theory of direct inspiration,' said the Nilghai, returning Torpenhow's large

and workmanlike bellows to their nail on the wall. 'We believe in cobblers' wax. La!where you sit down.'

'No skylarking in my rooms. You two smashed half my furniture last time you threw the cushions about. You

Binkie had jumped down from the sofa and was fawning round Dick's knee, and scratching at his boots.

'Dear man!' said Dick, snatching him up, and kissing him on the black patch above his right eye. 'Did ums

was, Binks? Did that ugly Nilghai turn you off the sofa? Bite him, Mr. Binkie.' He pitched him on the

Nilghai's stomach, as the big man lay at ease, and Binkie pretended to destroy the Nilghai inch by inch, till a

sofa cushion extinguished him, and panting he stuck out his tongue at the company.

I saw him making love to the butcher at the corner when the shutters were being taken downjust as if he

'Binks, is that a true bill?' said Torpenhow, severely. The little dog retreated under the sofa cushion, and

showed by the fat white back of him that he really had no further interest in the discussion.

'Strikes me that another disreputable dog went for a walk, too,' said the Nilghai. 'What made you get up so

'He knows it would need three of us for a serious business like that. No, I felt lonesome and unhappy, so I

'Somewhere on the Channel. Progly or Snigly, or some wateringplace was its name; I've forgotten; but it

'Only the Barralong outwards to Australia, and an Odessa grainboat loaded down by the head. It was a thick

'Wherefore put on one's best trousers to see the Barralong?' said Torpenhow, pointing.

'Because I've nothing except these things and my painting duds. Besides, I wanted to do honour to the sea.'

Torpenhow and the Nilghai exchanged a look as Dick, stooping, busied himself among the former's boots and

'These will do,' he said at last; 'I can't say I think much of your taste in slippers, but the fit's the thing.' He

slipped his feet into a pair of socklike sambhurskin foot coverings, found a long chair, and lay at length.

'They're my own pet pair,' Torpenhow said. 'I was just going to put them on myself.'

'All your reprehensible selfishness. Just because you see me happy for a minute, you want to worry me and

'Good for you that Dick can't wear your clothes, Torp. You two live communistically,' said the Nilghai.

'Confound you, have you been rummaging round among my clothes, then?' said Dick. 'I put a sovereign in the

tobaccojar yesterday. How do you expect a man to keep his accounts properly if you'

'Hid a sovereign yesterday! You're no sort of financier. You lent me a fiver about a month back. Do you

'Do you remember that I paid it you ten days later, and you put it at the bottom of the tobacco?'

'You thought! About a week ago I went into your studio to get some 'baccy and found it.'

'You couldn't feed the Nilghai under twice the moneynot though you gave him Army beef. Well, I suppose

'You're a most amazing cuckoo in many directions,' said the Nilghai, still chuckling over the thought of the

dinner. 'Never mind. We had both been working very hard, and it was your unearned increment we spent, and

'That's pleasantfrom the man who is bursting with my meat, too. I'll get that dinner back one of these days.

'Suppose, just for a changeas a startling variety, you knowwe, that is to say we, get our charcoal and our

Torpenhow spoke pointedly, but Dick only wriggled his toes inside the soft leather moccasins.

'What a oneideaed clucker that is! If I had any unfinished figures on hand, I haven't any model; if I had my

model, I haven't any spray, and I never leave charcoal unfixed overnight; and if I had my spray and twenty

photographs of backgrounds, I couldn't do anything tonight. I don't feel that way.'

'Very good, I will do some work,' said Dick, rising swiftly. 'I'll fetch the Nungapunga Book, and we'll add

'Aren't you worrying him a little too much?' asked the Nilghai, when Dick had left the room.

'Perhaps, but I know what he can turn out if he likes. It makes me savage to hear him praised for past work

'So have I, but we know our limitations now. I'm dashed if I know what Dick's may be when he gives himself

'And when all's said and done, you will be put asidequite rightlyfor a female girl.'

'To the sea. Didn't you see the look in his eyes when he talked about her? He's as restless as a swallow in

'I don't know, and I don't care, but he has the beginnings of the gofever upon him. He wants to upstakes

and move out. There's no mistaking the signs. Whatever he may have said before, he has the call upon him

Dick returned with the big clasped sketchbook that the Nilghai knew well and did not love too much. In it

Dick had drawn all manner of moving incidents, experienced by himself or related to him by the others, of all

the four corners of the earth. But the wider range of the Nilghai's body and life attracted him most. When

truth failed he fell back on fiction of the wildest, and represented incidents in the Nilghai's career that were

unseemly,his marriages with many African princesses, his shameless betrayal, for Arab wives, of an army

corps to the Mahdi, his tattooment by skilled operators in Burmah, his interview (and his fears) with the

yellow headsman in the bloodstained executionground of Canton, and finally, the passings of his spirit into

the bodies of whales, elephants, and toucans. Torpenhow from time to time had added rhymed descriptions,

and the whole was a curious piece of art, because Dick decided, having regard to the name of the book which

being interpreted means 'naked,' that it would be wrong to draw the Nilghai with any clothes on, under any

circumstances. Consequently the last sketch, representing that muchenduring man calling on the War Office

to press his claims to the Egyptian medal, was hardly delicate. He settled himself comfortably on

'What a fortune you would have been to Blake, Nilghai!' he said. 'There's a succulent pinkness about some of

these sketches that's more than lifelike. "The Nilghai surrounded while bathing by the Mahdieh"that was

'It was very nearly my last bath, you irreverent dauber. Has Binkie come into the Saga yet?'

'No; the Binkieboy hasn't done anything except eat and kill cats. Let's see. Here you are as a stainedglass

saint in a church. Deuced decorative lines about your anatomy; you ought to be grateful for being handed

down to posterity in this way. Fifty years hence you'll exist in rare and curious facsimiles at ten guineas each.

'The undomestic life of the Nilghai, then. Of course. Massmeeting of his wives in Trafalgar Square. That's

it. They came from the ends of the earth to attend Nilghai's wedding to an English bride. This shall be an

'Don't worry; it keeps one's hand inspecially when you begin without the pencil.' He set to work rapidly.

'Gad, that's clever enough!' said Torpenhow over his shoulder, as Dick brought out of the paper with three

twirls of the brush a very fat back and labouring shoulder pressed against stone.

'Just imagine,' Dick continued, 'if we could publish a few of these dear little things every time the Nilghai

subsidises a man who can write, to give the public an honest opinion of my pictures.'

'Well, you'll admit I always tell you when I have done anything of that kind. I know I can't hammer you as

you ought to be hammered, so I give the job to another. Young Maclagan, for instance'

'Nooone halfminute, old man; stick your hand out against the dark of the wallpaperyou only burble

and call me names. That left shoulder's out of drawing. I must literally throw a veil over that. Where's my

'I only gave him his ridingorders toto lambast you on general principles for not producing work that will

'Whereupon that young fool,'Dick threw back his head and shut one eye as he shifted the page under his

hand,'being left alone with an inkpot and what he conceived were his own notions, went and spilt them

both over me in the papers. You might have engaged a grown man for the business, Nilghai. How do you

'How the deuce do three dabs and two scratches make the stuff stand away from the body as it does?' said

'It just depends on where you put 'em. If Maclagan had know that much about his business he might have

insisted the Nilghai, who had really taken considerable trouble in hiring for Dick's benefit the pen of a young

gentleman who devoted most of his waking hours to an anxious consideration of the aims and ends of Art,

'Wait a minute till I see how I am going to manage my procession of wives. You seem to have married

extensively, and I must rough 'em in with the pencilMedes, Parthians, Edomites. . . . Now, setting aside the

weakness and the wickedness andand the fatheadedness of deliberately trying to do work that will live, as

they call it, I'm content with the knowledge that I've done my best up to date, and I shan't do anything like it

'Oh no. It isn't here and it isn't sold. Better than that, it can't be sold, and I don't think any one knows where it

is. I'm sure I don't. . . . And yet more and more wives, on the north side of the square. Observe the virtuous

'You may as well explain,' said Torpenhow, and Dick lifted his head from the paper.

'The sea reminded me of it,' he said slowly. 'I wish it hadn't. It weighs some few thousand tonsunless you

'There's no pose in the matter at all. It's a fact. I was loafing from Lima to Auckland in a big, old, condemned

passengership turned into a cargoboat and owned by a secondhad Italian firm. She was a crazy basket.

We were cut down to fifteen ton of coal a day, and we thought ourselves lucky when we kicked seven knots

an hour out of her. Then we used to stop and let the bearings cool down, and wonder whether the crack in the

'I was flush for the time being, so I was a passenger, or else I should have been a steward, I think,' said Dick,

with perfect gravity, returning to the procession of angry wives. 'I was the only other passenger from Lima,

'Wait a minute. She had been in the China passenger trade and her lower decks had bunks for two thousand

pigtails. Those were all taken down, and she was empty up to her nose, and the lights came through the port

holesmost annoying lights to work in till you got used to them. I hadn't anything to do for weeks. The

ship's charts were in pieces and our skipper daren't run south for fear of catching a storm. So he did his best to

knock all the Society Islands out of the water one by one, and I went into the lower deck, and did my picture

on the port side as far forward in her as I could go. There was some brown paint and some green paint that

they used for the boats, and some black paint for ironwork, and that was all I had.'

'There was only one, and it was a woman; but it gave me the notion of my picture.'

'She was a sort of NegroidJewessCuban; with morals to match. She couldn't read or write, and she didn't

want to, but she used to come down and watch me paint, and the skipper didn't like it, because he was paying

'It was the best time I ever had. To begin with, we didn't know whether we should go up or go down any

minute when there was a sea on; and when it was calm it was paradise; and the woman used to mix the paints

and talk broken English, and the skipper used to steal down every few minutes to the lower deck, because he

said he was afraid of fire. So, you see, we could never tell when we might be caught, and I had a splendid

Neither the angles in Heaven above nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the

It came out of the seaall by itself. I drew that fight, fought out in green water over the naked, choking soul,

and the woman served as the model for the devils and the angels bothseadevils and seaangels, and the

soul half drowned between them. It doesn't sound much, but when there was a good light on the lower deck it

looked very fine and creepy. It was seven by fourteen feet, all done in shifting light for shifting light.'

'She and the sea between themimmensely. There was a heap of bad drawing in that picture. I remember I

went out of my way to foreshorten for sheer delight of doing it, and I foreshortened damnably, but for all that

it's the best thing I've ever done; and now I suppose the ship's broken up or gone down. Whew! What a time

'It all ended. They were loading her with wool when I left the ship, but even the stevedores kept the picture

'She was scared too when it was finished. She used to cross herself before she went down to look at it. Just

three colours and no chance of getting any more, and the sea outside and unlimited lovemaking inside, and

the fear of death atop of everything else, O Lord!' He had ceased to look at the sketch, but was staring straight

'Because those things come not by fasting and prayer. When I find a cargoboat and a JewessCuban and

'No, I shall not.' Dick shut the sketchbook with a bang. 'This room's as hot as an oven. Open the window,

He leaned into the darkness, watching the greater darkness of London below him. The chambers stood much

higher than the other houses, commanding a hundred chimneyscrooked cowls that looked like sitting cats

as they swung round, and other uncouth brick and zinc mysteries supported by iron stanchions and clamped

by 8pieces. Northward the lights of Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square threw a coppercoloured glare

above the black roofs, and southward by all the orderly lights of the Thames. A train rolled out across one of

the railway bridges, and its thunder drowned for a minute the dull roar of the streets. The Nilghai looked at

his watch and said shortly, 'That's the Paris nightmail. You can book from here to St. Petersburg if you

Dick crammed head and shoulders out of the window and looked across the river. Torpenhow came to his

side, while the Nilghai passed over quietly to the piano and opened it. Binkie, making himself as large as

possible, spread out upon the sofa with the air of one who is not to be lightly disturbed.

'Well,' said the Nilghai to the two pairs of shoulders, 'have you never seen this place before?'

A steamtug on the river hooted as she towed her barges to wharf. Then the boom of the traffic came into the

Dick's chin was in his hand as he answered, in the words of a general not without fame, still looking out on

'We shall give the Binkiedog a cold,' said Torpenhow. 'Come in,' and they withdrew their heads. 'You'll be

buried in Kensal Green, Dick, one of these days, if it isn't closed by the time you want to go thereburied

'Allah forbid! I shall get away before that time comes. Give a man room to stretch his legs, Mr. Binkie.' Dick

flung himself down on the sofa and tweaked Binkie's velvet ears, yawning heavily the while.

'You'll find that wardrobecase very much out of tune,' Torpenhow said to the Nilghai. 'It's never touched

'A piece of gross extravagance,' Dick grunted. 'The Nilghai only comes when I'm out.'

'The life of the Nilghai is fraud and slaughter, His writings are watered Dickens and water; But the voice of

The man laughed. Singing was his one polite accomplishment, as many Presstents in faroff lands had

'No,' said Dick, sharply, and the Nilghai opened his eyes. The old chanty whereof he, among a very few,

possessed all the words was not a pretty one, but Dick had heard it many times before without wincing.

Without prelude he launched into that stately tune that calls together and troubles the hearts of the gipsies of

'Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies, Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain.'?

Dick turned uneasily on the sofa, for he could hear the bows of the Barralong crashing into the green seas on

'We'll rant and we'll roar like true British sailors, We'll rant and we'll roar across the salt seas, Until we take

soundings in the Channel of Old England From Ushant to Scilly 'tis fortyfive leagues.'?

'Thirtyfivethirtyfive,' said Dick, petulantly. 'Don't tamper with Holy Writ. Go on, Nilghai.'?

'That would be a better song if her head were turned the other wayto the Ushant light, for instance,' said

'Flinging his arms about like a mad windmill,' said Torpenhow. 'Give us something else, Nilghai. You're in

'Give us the "Ganges Pilot"; you sang that in the square the night before ElMaghrib. By the way, I wonder

Raynor, Vicery, and Deenesall dead; Vincent caught smallpox in Cairo, carried it here and died of it. Yes,

'Umph! And yet the men here who've done their work in a wellwarmed studio all their lives, with a

'I gambled with one to get at the other. Don't preach. Go on with the "Pilot." Where in the world did you get

'On a tombstone,' said the Nilghai. 'On a tombstone in a distant land. I made it an accompaniment with heaps

'I have slipped my cable, messmates, I'm drifting down with the tide, I have my sailing orders, while yet an

And never on fair June morning have I put out to sea With clearer conscience or better hope, or a heart more

'Shoulder to shoulder, Joe, my boy, into the crowd like a wedge Strike with the hangers, messmates, but do

Cries Charnock, "Scatter the faggots, double that Brahmin in two, The tall pale widow for me, Joe, the little

'Young Joe (you're nearing sixty), why is your hide so dark? Katie has soft fair blue eyes, who blackened

They were all singing now, Dick with the roar of the wind of the open sea about his ears as the deep bass

'Sounding, sounding the Ganges, floating down with the tide, Moore me close to Charnock, next to my

My blessing to Kate at FairlightHolwell, my thanks to you; Steady! We steer for heaven, through

'Now what is there in that nonsense to make a man restless?' said Dick, hauling Binkie from his feet to his

'That's what men say when they go to say goodbye to a woman. It's more easy though to get rid of three

'A piece of one's life,' continued Torpenhow. 'No, she can't. His face darkened for a moment. 'She says she

wants to sympathise with you and help you in your work, and everything else that clearly a man must do for

himself. Then she sends round five notes a day to ask why the dickens you haven't been wasting your time

'Don't generalise,' said the Nilghai. 'By the time you arrive at five notes a day you must have gone through a

'I shouldn't have gone down to the sea,' said Dick, just a little anxious to change the conversation. 'And you

'No, but I'm fatally compromised. She's an enduring old hag, and I'm sorry I ever met her. Why wasn't I born

'Hear him blaspheming his first love! Why in the world shouldn't you listen to her?' said Torpenhow.

Before Dick could reply the Nilghai lifted up his voice with a shout that shook the windows, in 'The Men of

the Sea,' that begins, as all know, 'The sea is a wicked old woman,' and after rading through eight lines whose

imagery is truthful, ends in a refrain, slow as the clacking of a capstan when the boat comes unwillingly up to

She is kinder than ye; For the call is on our heartstrings!" Said The Men of the Sea.'?

The Nilghai sang that verse twice, with simple cunning, intending that Dick should hear. But Dick was

'"Ye that love us, can ye move us? She is dearer than ye; And your sleep will be the sweeter," Said The Men

The rough words beat like the blows of the waves on the bows of the rickety boat from Lima in the days

when Dick was mixing paints, making love, drawing devils and angels in the half dark, and wondering

whether the next minute would put the Italian captain's knife between his shoulderblades. And the gofever

diseases, waked and raged, urging him who loved Maisie beyond anything in the world, to go away and taste

the old hot, unregenerate life again,to scuffle, swear, gamble, and love light loves with his fellows; to take

ship and know the sea once more, and by her beget pictures; to talk to Binat among the sands of Port Said

while Yellow 'Tina mixed the drinks; to hear the crackle of musketry, and see the smoke roll outward, thin

and thicken again till the shining black faces came through, and in that hell every man was strictly

responsible for his own head, and his own alone, and struck with an unfettered arm. It was impossible, utterly

'"Oh, our fathers in the churchyard, She is older than ye, And our graves will be the greener," Said The Men

'What is there to hinder?' said Torpenhow, in the long hush that followed the song.

'You said a little time since that you wouldn't come for a walk round the world, Torp.'

'That was months ago, and I only objected to your making money for travelling expenses. You've shot your

'Get some of the fat off you; you're disgracefully out of condition,' said the Nilghai, making a plunge from the

chair and grasping a handful of Dick generally over the right ribs. 'Soft as puttypure tallow born of

'We're all equally gross, Nilghai. Next time you have to take the field you'll sit down, wink your eyes, gasp,

'Do you suppose I want to be told where to go? Great Heavens, the only difficulty is to know where I'm to

'Then you'll be buried in Kensal Green and turn into adipocere with the others,' said Torpenhow. 'Are you

thinking of commissions in hand? Pay forfeit and go. You've money enough to travel as a king if you please.'

'You've the grisliest notions of amusement, Torp. I think I see myself shipping first class on a

sixthousandton hotel, and asking the third engineer what makes the engines go round, and whether it isn't

very warm in the stokehold. Ho! ho! I should ship as a loafer if ever I shipped at all, which I'm not going to

'That's something at any rate. Where will you go?' said Torpenhow. 'It would do you all the good in the

'I shall go in the first place to Rathray's stable, where I shall hire one horse, and take him very carefully as far

as Richmond Hill. Then I shall walk him back again, in case he should accidentally burst into a lather and

make Rathray angry. I shall do that tomorrow, for the sake of air and exercise.'

'Bah!' Dick had barely time to throw up his arm and ward off the cushion that the disgusted Torpenhow

At this point the conference broke up in disorder, because Dick would not open his mouth till the Nilghai

held his nose fast, and there was some trouble in forcing the nozzle of the bellows between his teeth; and

even when it was there he weakly tried to puff against the force of the blast, and his cheeks blew up with a

great explosion; and the enemy becoming helpless with laughter he so beat them over the head with a soft

sofa cushion that that became unsewn and distributed its feathers, and Binkie, interfering in Torpenhow's

interests, was bundled into the halfempty bag and advised to scratch his way out, which he did after a while,

travelling rapidly up and down the floor in the shape of an agitated green haggis, and when he came out

looking for satisfaction, the three pillars of his world were picking feathers out of their hair.

'A prophet has no honour in his own country,' said Dick, ruefully, dusting his knees. 'This filthy fluff will

'It was all for your own good,' said the Nilghai. 'Nothing like air and exercise.'

'All for your good,' said Torpenhow, not in the least with reference to past clowning. 'It would let you focus

things at their proper worth and prevent your becoming slack in this hothouse of a town. Indeed it would, old

man. I shouldn't have spoken if I hadn't thought so. Only, you make a joke of everything.'

'Before God I do no such thing,' said Dick, quickly and earnestly. 'You don't know me if you think that.'

'How can fellows like ourselves, who know what life and death really mean, dare to make a joke of anything?

I know we pretend it, to save ourselves from breaking down or going to the other extreme. Can't I see, old

man, how you're always anxious about me, and try to advise me to make my work better? Do you suppose I

don't think about that myself? But you can't help meyou can't help menot even you. I must play my own

'What's the one thing in the Nilghai Saga that I've never drawn in the Nungapunga Book?' Dick continued to

Now there was one blank page in the book given over to the sketch that Dick had not drawn of the crowning

exploit in the Nilghai's life; when that man, being young and forgetting that his body and bones belonged to

the paper that employed him, had ridden over sunburned slippery grass in the rear of Bredow's brigade on the

day that the troopers flung themselves at Caurobert's artillery, and for aught they knew twenty battalions in

front, to save the battered 24th German Infantry, to give time to decide the fate of Vionville, and to learn ere

their remnant came back to Flavigay that cavalry can attack and crumple and break unshaken infantry.

Whenever he was inclined to think over a life that might have been better, an income that might have been

larger, and a soul that might have been considerably cleaner, the Nilghai would comfort himself with the

thought, 'I rode with Bredow's brigade at Vionville,' and take heart for any lesser battle the next day might

'I left it out because Nilghai taught me what the Germany army learned then, and what Schmidt taught their

What is it? "Take care of the time and the dressing will take care of itself." I must ride my own line to my

'Maybe I'm as wrong as I can behideously wrong. I must find that out for myself, as I have to think things

out for myself, but I daren't turn my head to dress by the next man. It hurts me a great deal more than you

know not to be able to go, but I cannot, that's all. I must do my own work and live my own life in my own

Only don't think I frivol about it, Torp. I have my own matches and sulphur, and I'll make my own hell,

There was an uncomfortable pause. Then Torpenhow said blandly, 'What did the Governor of North Carolina

'Excellent notion. It is a long time between drinks. There are the makings of a very fine prig in you, Dick,'

'I've liberated my mind, estimable Binkie, with the feathers in his mouth.' Dick picked up the still indignant

'You're tied up in a sack and made to run about blind, Binkiewee, without any reason, and it has hurt your

little feelings. Never mind. Sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas, and don't sneeze in my eye because I

'That's distinctly one for you,' said the Nilghai. 'I told you it was hopeless to meddle with him. He's not

'He'd swear at me if he weren't. I can't make it out. He has the gofever upon him and he won't go. I only

hope that he mayn't have to go some day when he doesn't want to,' said Torpenhow.

* * * * * * In his own room Dick was settling a question with himselfand the question was whether all the

world, and all that was therein, and a burning desire to exploit both, was worth one threepenny piece thrown

only I didn't realise that the sea was so strong. I didn't feel it so much when I was with Maisie. These

But it was only Herrick's Nightpiece to Julia that the Nilghai sang, and before it was ended Dick reappeared

on the threshold, not altogether clothed indeed, but in his right mind, thirsty and at peace.

The mood had come and gone with the rising and the falling of the tide by Fort Keeling.

HE DID no work of any kind for the rest of the week. Then came another Sunday. He dreaded and longed for

the day always, but since the redhaired girl had sketched him there was rather more dread than desire in his

He found that Maisie had entirely neglected his suggestions about linework. She had gone off at score filed

with some absurd notion for a 'fancy head.' It cost Dick something to command his temper.

'Ah, but this will be a picture,a real picture; and I know that Kami will let me send it to the Salon. You

'We're going over to France a month sooner because of it. I shall get the idea sketched out here and work it up

Dick's heart stood still, and he came very near to being disgusted with his queen who could do no wrong. 'Just

when I thought I had made some headway, she goes off chasing butterflies. It's too maddening!'

There was no possibility of arguing, for the redhaired girl was in the studio. Dick could only look

'I'm sorry,' he said, 'and I think you make a mistake. But what's the idea of your new picture?'

'It's this,' said the redhaired girl behind him. 'I was reading it to Maisie the other day from The City of

'A little. I am sorry I spoke. There are pictures in it. What has taken her fancy?'

'Her folded wings as of a mighty eagle, But all too impotent to lift the regal Robustness of her earthborn

'The forehead charged with baleful thoughts and dreams, The household bunch of keys, the housewife's

gown, Voluminous indented, and yet rigid As though a shell of burnished metal frigid, Her feet thickshod to

'But that has been done already by an obscure artist by the name of Durer,' said he. 'How does the poem

'Three centuries and threescore years ago, With phantasies of his peculiar thought.

'No, it won't,' said Maisie, putting down the teacups with a clatter to reassure herself. 'And I mean to do it.

'How in perdition can one do work when one hasn't had the proper training? Any fool can get a notion. It

needs training to drive the thing through,training and conviction; not rushing after the first fancy.' Dick

'Baffled and beaten back, she works on still; Weary and sick of soul, she works the more.

Sustained by her indomitable will, The hands shall fashion, and the brain shall pore, And all her sorrow shall

'Sitting on a throne of rejected pictures? No, I shan't, dear. The notion in itself has fascinated me.Of course

'That's a direct challenge. If you can do a Melancolia that isn't merely a sorrowful female head, I can do a

better one; and I will, too. What d'you know about Melacolias?' Dick firmly believed that he was even then

'She was a woman,' said Maisie, 'and she suffered a great deal,till she could suffer no more. Then she

'Never mind about the picture,' he said. 'Are you really going back to Kami's for a month before your time?'

'You haven't the power. You have only the ideasthe ideas and the little cheap impulses. How you could

have kept at your work for ten years steadily is a mystery to me. So you are really going,a month before

'Your workbah! . . . No, I didn't mean that. It's all right, dear. Of course you must do your work, andI

'Won't you even stay for tea? 'No, thank you. Have I your leave to go, dear? There's nothing more you

'I wish you could stay, and then we could talk over my picture. If only one single picture's a success, it draws

attention to all the others. I know some of my work is good, if only people could see. And you needn't have

Maisie stood by the studio window, thinking, till the redhaired girl returned, a little white at the corners of

'Dick's gone off,' said Maisie. 'Just when I wanted to talk about the picture. Isn't it selfish of him?'

Her companion opened her lips as if to speak, shut them again, and went on reading The City of Dreadful

Dick was in the Park, walking round and round a tree that he had chosen as his confidante for many Sundays

past. He was swearing audibly, and when he found that the infirmities of the English tongue hemmed in his

rage, he sought consolation in Arabic, which is expressly designed for the use of the afflicted. He was not

pleased with the reward of his patient service; nor was he pleased with himself; and it was long before he

'It's a losing game,' he said. 'I'm worth nothing when a whim of hers is in question. But in a losing game at

Port Said we used to double the stakes and go on. She do a Melancolia! She hasn't the power, or the insight,

or the training. Only the desire. She's cursed with the curse of Reuben. She won't do linework, because it

means real work; and yet she's stronger than I am. I'll make her understand that I can beat her on her own

Melancolia. Even then she wouldn't care. She says I can only do blood and bones. I don't believe she has

blood in her veins. All the same I lover her; and I must go on loving her; and if I can humble her inordinate

vanity I will. I'll do a Melancolia that shall be something like a Melancolia"the Melancolia that transcends

He discovered that the notion would not come to order, and that he could not free his mind for an hour from

the thought of Maisie's departure. He took very small interest in her rough studies for the Melancolia when

she showed them next week. The Sundays were racing past, and the time was at hand when all the church

bells in London could not ring Maisie back to him. Once or twice he said something to Binkie about

'hermaphroditic futilities,' but the little dog received so many confidences both from Torpenhow and Dick

Dick was permitted to see the girls off. They were going by the Dover nightboat; and they hoped to return in

August. It was then February, and Dick felt that he was being hardly used. Maisie was so busy stripping the

small house across the Park, and packing her canvases, that she had not time for thought. Dick went down to

Dover and wasted a day there fretting over a wonderful possibility. Would Maisie at the very last allow him

one small kiss? He reflected that he might capture her by the strong arm, as he had seem women captured in

the Southern Soudan, and lead her away; but Maisie would never be led. She would turn her gray eyes upon

him and say, 'Dick, how selfish you are!' Then his courage would fail him. It would be better, after all, to beg

Maisie looked more than usually kissable as she stepped from the nightmail on to the windy pier, in a gray

waterproof and a little gray cloth travellingcap. The redhaired girl was not so lovely. Her green eyes were

hollow and her lips were dry. Dick saw the trunks aboard, and went to Maisie's side in the darkness under the

bridge. The mailbags were thundering into the forehold, and the redhaired girl was watching them.

'You'll have a rough passage tonight,' said Dick. 'It's blowing outside. I suppose I may come over and see

'You mustn't. I shall be busy. At least, if I want you I'll send for you. But I shall write from VitrysurMarne.

I shall have heaps of things to consult you about. Oh, Dick, you have been so good to me!so good to me!'

'What's the use of worrying? You know I should ruin your life, and you'd ruin mine, as things are now. You

remember what you said when you were so angry that day in the Park? One of us has to be broken.

'Don't say anything. Give me a kiss. Only one kiss, Maisie. I'll swear I won't take any more. You might as

It was only one kiss, but, since there was no timelimit specified, it was a long one. Maisie wrenched herself

'Goodbye, darling. I didn't mean to scare you. I'm sorry. Onlykeep well and do good work,specially

the Melancolia. I'm going to do one, too. Remember me to Kami, and be careful what you drink. Country

drinkingwater is bad everywhere, but it's worse in France. Write to me if you want anything, and goodbye.

Say goodbye to the whateveryoucallum girl, andcan't I have another kiss? No. You're quite right.

A should told him that it was not seemly to charge of the mailbag incline. He reached the pier as the steamer

'And there's nothingnothing in the wide worldto keep us apart except her obstinacy. These Calais

nightboats are much too small. I'll get Torp to write to the papers about it. She's beginning to pitch already.'

Maisie stood where Dick had left her till she heard a little gasping cough at her elbow. The redhaired girl's

'He kissed you!' she said. 'How could you let him, when he wasn't anything to you? How dared you to take a

kiss from him? Oh, Maisie, let's go to the ladies' cabin. I'm sick,deadly sick.'

'We aren't into open water yet. Go down, dear, and I'll stay here. I don't like the smell of the engines. . . . Poor

Dick returned to town next day just in time for lunch, for which he had telegraphed. To his disgust, there

He lifted up his voice like the bears in the fairytale, and Torpenhow entered, looking guilty.

'H'sh!' said he. 'Don't make such a noise. I took it. Come into my rooms, and I'll show you why.'

Dick paused amazed at the threshold, for on Torpenhow's sofa lay a girl asleep and breathing heavily. The

little cheap sailorhat, the blueandwhite dress, fitter for June than for February, dabbled with mud at the

skirts, the jacket trimmed with imitation Astrakhan and ripped at the shoulderseams, the

oneandelevenpenny umbrella, and, above all, the disgraceful condition of the kidtopped boots, declared

'It looks bad, I admit, but I was coming in after lunch, and she staggered into the hall. I thought she was drunk

at first, but it was collapse. I couldn't leave her as she was, so I brought her up here and gave her your lunch.

She was fainting from want of food. She went fast asleep the minute she had finished.'

'I know something of that complaint. She's been living on sausages, I suppose. Torp, you should have handed

her over to a policeman for presuming to faint in a respectable house. Poor little wretch! Look at the face!

There isn't an ounce of immorality in it. Only folly,slack, fatuous, feeble, futile folly. It's a typical head.

D'you notice how the skull begins to show through the flesh padding on the face and cheekbone?'

'What a coldblooded barbarian it is! Don't hit a woman when she's down. Can't we do anything? She was

She almost fell into my arms, and when she got to the food she ate like a wild beast. It was horrible.'

'I can give her money, which she would probably spend in drinks. Is she going to sleep for ever?'

'Yes. Thank you. There aren't many gentlemen that are as kind as you are. Thank you.'

'When did you leave service?' said Dick, who had been watching the scarred and chapped hands.

'I suppose not. One moment. Would you be good enough to turn your face to the window?'

The girl obeyed, and Dick watched her face keenly,so keenly that she made as if to hide behind

'The eyes have it,' said Dick, walking up and down. 'They are superb eyes for my business. And, after all,

every head depends on the eyes. This has been sent from heaven to make up forwhat was taken away. Now

'Gently, old man, gently. You're scaring somebody out of her wits,' said Torpenhow, who could see the girl

'Don't let him hit me! Oh, please don't let him hit me! I've been hit cruel today because I spoke to a man.

Don't let him look at me like that! He's reg'lar wicked, that one. Don't let him look at me like that, neither!

The overstrained nerves in the frail body gave way, and the girl wept like a little child and began to scream.

'There you are,' said Dick, soothingly. 'My friend here can call for a policeman, and you can run through that

'Nothing in the world to hurt you. Now listen to me for a minute. I'm what they call an artist by profession.

'I dare say. I haven't risen to popshop labels yet. Those are done by the Academicians. I want to draw your

'Because it's pretty. That is why you will come to the room across the landing three times a week at eleven in

the morning, and I'll give you three quid a week just for sitting still and being drawn. And there's a quid on

'For nothing? Oh, my!' The girl turned the sovereign in her hand, and with more foolish tears, 'Ain't neither o'

'No. Only ugly girls do that. Try and remember this place. And, by the way, what's your name?'

'I'm Bessic,Bessie It's no use giving the rest. Bessie Broke,Stonebroke, if you like. What's your

'My name's Heldar, and my friend's called Torpenhow; and you must be sure to come here. Where do you

'Souththewater,one room,five and sixpence a week. Aren't you making fun of me about that three

'You'll see later on. And, Bessie, next time you come, remember, you needn't wear that paint. It's bad for the

Bessie withdrew, scrubbing her cheek with a ragged pockethandkerchief. The two men looked at each other.

'I'm afraid I've been a fool. It isn't our business to run about the earth reforming Bessie Brokes. And a woman

'She will if she thinks she can get food and warmth here. I know she will, worse luck. But remember, old

'The idea! She's a dissolute little scarecrow,a guttersnippet and nothing more.'

'So you think. Wait till she has been fed a little and freed from fear. That fair type recovers itself very

quickly. You won't know her in a week or two, when that abject fear has died out of her eyes. She'll be too

'I am not in the habit of playing with hot coals to please anybody. She has been sent from heaven, as I may

'What's the use of having a friend, if you must sling your notions at him in words? You ought to know what

'Even so; but grunts mean anything in your language, from bad 'baccy to wicked dealers. And I don't think

'It was a high and soulful grunt. You ought to have understood that it meant the Melancolia.' Dick walked

Torpenhow up and down the room, keeping silence. Then he smote him in the ribs, 'Now don't you see it?

Bessie's abject futility, and the terror in her eyes, welded on to one or two details in the way of sorrow that

have come under my experience lately. Likewise some orange and black,two keys of each. But I can't

'It sounds mad enough. You'd better stick to your soldiers, Dick, instead of maundering about heads and eyes

'They're as proud as a turkey when they hold the ready cash, You ought to 'ear the way they laugh an' joke;

They are tricky an' they're funny when they've got the ready money, Ow! but see 'em when they're all

Then he sat down to pour out his heart to Maisie in a foursheet letter of counsel and encouragement, and

registered an oath that he would get to work with an undivided heart as soon as Bessie should reappear.

The girl kept her appointment unpainted and unadorned, afraid and overbold by turns. When she found that

she was merely expected to sit still, she grew calmer, and criticised the appointments of the studio with

freedom and some point. She liked the warmth and the comfort and the release from fear of physical pain.

Dick made two or three studies of her head in monochrome, but the actual notion of the Melancolia would

'What a mess you keep your things in!' said Bessie, some days later, when she felt herself thoroughly at

'I buy things to wear, and wear 'em till they go to pieces. I don't know what Torpenhow does.'

Bessie made diligent inquiry in the latter's room, and unearthed a bale of disreputable socks. 'Some of these

I'll mend now,' she said, 'and some I'll take home. D'you know, I sit all day long at home doing nothing, just

like a lady, and no more noticing them other girls in the house than if they was so many flies. I don't have any

unnecessary words, but I put 'em down quick, I can tell you, when they talk to me. No; it's quite nice these

days. I lock my door, and they can only call me names through the keyhole, and I sit inside, just like a lady,

'Three quid a week from me, and the delights of my society. No socks mended. Nothing from Torp except a

nod on the landing now and again, and all his socks mended. Bessie is very much a woman,' thought Dick;

and he looked at her between halfshut eyes. Food and rest had transformed the girl, as Dick knew they

'What are you looking at me like that for?' she said quickly. 'Don't. You look reg'lar bad when you look that

Bessie behaved beautifully. Only it was difficult at the end of a sitting to bid her go out into the gray streets.

She very much preferred the studio and a big chair by the stove, with some socks in her lap as an excuse for

delay. Then Torpenhow would come in, and Bessie would be moved to tell strange and wonderful stories of

her past, and still stranger ones of her present improved circumstances. She would make them tea as though

she had a right to make it; and once or twice on these occasions Dick caught Torpenhow's eyes fixed on the

trim little figure, and because Bessie'' flittings about the room made Dick ardently long for Maisie, he realised

whither Torpenhow's thoughts were tending. And Bessie was exceedingly careful of the condition of

Torpenhow's linen. She spoke very little to him, but sometimes they talked together on the landing.

'I was a great fool,' Dick said to himself. 'I know what red firelight looks like when a man's tramping through

a strange town; and ours is a lonely, selfish sort of life at the best. I wonder Maisie doesn't feel that

sometimes. But I can't order Bessie away. That's the worst of beginning things. One never knows where they

One evening, after a sitting prolonged to the last limit of the light, Dick was roused from a nap by a broken

voice in Torpenhow's room. He jumped to his feet. 'Now what ought I to do? It looks foolish to go in.Oh,

bless you, Binkie!' The little terrier thrust Torpenhow's door open with his nose and came out to take

possession of Dick's chair. The door swung wide unheeded, and Dick across the landing could see Bessie in

the halflight making her little supplication to Torpenhow. She was kneeling by his side, and her hands were

'I know,I know,' she said thickly. ''Tisn't right o' me to do this, but I can't help it; and you were so

kind,so kind; and you never took any notice o' me. And I've mended all your things so carefully,I did.

But youcouldn't you take and live with me till Miss Right comes along? I'm only Miss Wrong, I know, but

I'd work my hands to the bare bone for you. And I'm not ugly to look at. Say you will!'

Dick hardly recognised Torpenhow's voice in reply 'But look here. It's no use. I'm liable to be ordered off

'What does that matter? Until you go, then. Until you go. 'Tisn't much I'm asking, andyou don't know how

good I can cook.' She had put an arm round his neck and was drawing his head down.

'Come here a minute, old man. I'm in trouble''Heaven send he'll listen to me!' There was something very

like an oath from Bessie's lips. She was afraid of Dick, and disappeared down the staircase in panic, but it

seemed an age before Torpenhow entered the studio. He went to the mantelpiece, buried his head on his arms,

'Who's interfering with which? Your own sense told you long ago you couldn't be such a fool. It was a tough

'I oughtn't to have seen her moving about these rooms as if they belonged to her. That's what upset me. It

'Now you talk sense. It does. But, since you aren't in a condition to discuss the disadvantages of double

'You're going away for a season on a brilliant tour to regain tone. You're going to Brighton, or Scarborough,

or Prawle Point, to see the ships go by. And you're going at once. Isn't it odd? I'll take care of Binkie, but out

you go immediately. Never resist the devil. He holds the bank. Fly from him. Pack your things and go.'

'And you call yourself a special correspondent! Pack first and inquire afterwards.'

'You'll probably think of some place to go to while you're moving,' said Dick. 'On to Euston, to begin with,

He returned to the studio, and lighted more candles, for he found the room very dark.

'Oh, you Jezebel! you futile little Jezebel! Won't you hate me tomorrow!Binkie, come here.'

Binkie turned over on his back on the hearthrug, and Dick stirred him with a meditative foot.

'I said she was not immoral. I was wrong. She said she could cook. That showed premeditated sin. Oh,

Binkie, if you are a man you will go to perdition; but if you are a woman, and say that you can cook, you will

'THIS is a cheerful life,' said Dick, some days later. 'Torp's away; Bessie hates me; I can't get at the notion of

the Melancolia; Maisie's letters are scrappy; and I believe I have indigestion. What give a man pains across

Dick had just gone through a lively scene with Bessie. She had for the fiftieth time reproached him for

sending Torpenhow away. She explained her enduring hatred for Dick, and made it clear to him that she only

sat for the sake of his money. 'And Mr. Torpenhow's ten times a better man than you,' she concluded.

The girl sat with her chin on her hand, scowling. 'To me! I'd like to catch you! If I wasn't afraid o' being hung

Dick smiled wearily. It is not pleasant to live in the company of a notion that will not work out, a foxterrier

that cannot talk, and a woman who talks too much. He would have answered, but at that moment there

unrolled itself from one corner of the studio a veil, as it were, of the flimsiest gauze. He rubbed his eyes, but

'This is disgraceful indigestion. Binkie, we will go to a medicineman. We can't have our eyes interfered

The doctor was an affable local practitioner with white hair, and he said nothing till Dick began to describe

'We all want a little patching and repairing from time to time,' he chirped. 'Like a ship, my dear sir,exactly

like a ship. Sometimes the hull is out of order, and we consult the surgeon; sometimes the rigging, and then I

advise; sometimes the engines, and we go to the brainspecialist; sometimes the lookout on the bridge is

tired, and then we see an oculist. I should recommend you to see an oculist. A little patching and repairing

Dick sought an oculist,the best in London. He was certain that the local practitioner did not know anything

about his trade, and more certain that Maisie would laugh at him if he were forced to wear spectacles.

'I've neglected the warnings of my lord the stomach too long. Hence these spots before the eyes, Binkie. I can

As he entered the dark hall that led to the consultingroom a man cannoned against him. Dick saw the face as

'That's the writertype. He has the same modelling of the forehead as Torp. He looks very sick. Probably

Even as he thought, a great fear came upon Dick, a fear that made him hold his breath as he walked into the

oculist's waiting room, with the heavy carved furniture, the darkgreen paper, and the soberhued prints on

Many people were waiting their turn before him. His eye was caught by a flaming redandgold

Christmascarol book. Little children came to that eyedoctor, and they needed largetype amusement.

'From the anatomy of the angels, it has been made in Germany.' He opened in mechanically, and there leaped

The next good joy that Mary had, It was the joy of three, To see her good Son Jesus Christ Making the blind

Dick read and reread the verse till his turn came, and the doctor was bending above him seated in an

armchair. The blaze of the gasmicroscope in his eyes made him wince. The doctor's hand touched the scar

of the swordcut on Dick's head, and Dick explained briefly how he had come by it. When the flame was

removed, Dick saw the doctor's face, and the fear came upon him again. The doctor wrapped himself in a

mist of words. Dick caught allusions to 'scar,' 'frontal bone,' 'optic nerve,' 'extreme caution,' and the

'Verdict?' he said faintly. 'My business is painting, and I daren't waste time. What do you make of it?'

Many sentences were pronounced in that darkened room, and the prisoners often needed cheering. Dick

'As far as I can gather,' he said, coughing above the spirit, 'you call it decay of the optic nerve, or something,

'I really could not say. One cannot ascertain the exact amount of injury inflicted by the swordcut. The scar is

an old one, andexposure to the strong light of the desert, did you say?with excessive application to fine

'I beg your pardon, but it has come without any warning. If you will let me, I'll sit here for a minute, and then

I'll go. You have been very good in telling me the truth. Without any warning; without any warning.

'We've got it very badly, little dog! Just as badly as we can get it. We'll go to the Park to think it out.'

They headed for a certain tree that Dick knew well, and they sat down to thin, because his legs were

'How could it have come without any warning? It's as sudden as being shot. It's the living death, Binkie.

We're to be shut up in the dark in one year if we're careful, and we shan't see anybody, and we shall never

have anything we want, not though we live to be a hundred!' Binkie wagged his tail joyously. 'Binkie, we

must think. Let's see how it feels to be blind.' Dick shut his eyes, and flaming commas and Catherinewheels

floated inside the lids. Yet when he looked across the Park the scope of his vision was not contracted. He

could see perfectly, until a procession of slowwheeling fireworks defiled across his eyeballs.

'Little dorglums, we aren't at all well. Let's go home. If only Torp were back, now!'

But Torpenhow was in the south of England, inspecting dockyards in the company of the Nilghai. His letters

Dick had never asked anybody to help him in his joys or his sorrows. He argued, in the loneliness of his

studio, henceforward to be decorated with a film of gray gauze in one corner, that, if his fate were blindness,

all the Torpenhows in the world could not save him. 'I can't call him off his trip to sit down and sympathise

with me. I must pull through this business alone,' he said. He was lying on the sofa, eating his moustache and

wondering what the darkness of the night would be like. Then came to his mind the memory of a quaint scene

in the Soudan. A soldier had been nearly hacked in two by a broadbladed Arab spear. For one instant the

man felt no pain. Looking down, he saw that his lifeblood was going from him. The stupid bewilderment on

his face was so intensely comic that both Dick and Torpenhow, still panting and unstrung from a fight for

life, had roared with laughter, in which the man seemed as if he would join, but, as his lips parted in a

sheepish grin, the agony of death came upon him, and he pitched grunting at their feet. Dick laughed again,

'But I have a little more time allowed me,' he said. He paced up and down the room, quietly at first, but

afterwards with the hurried feet of fear. It was as though a black shadow stood at his elbow and urged him to

go forward; and there were only weaving circles and floating pindots before his eyes.

'We need to be calm, Binkie; we must be calm.' He talked aloud for the sake of distraction. 'This isn't nice at

all. What shall we do? We must do something. Our time is short. I shouldn't have believed that this morning;

Binkie smiled from ear to ear, as a wellbred terrier should, but made no suggestion.

'"Were there but world enough and time, This coyness, Binkie, were not crime. . . . But at my back I always

hear"' He wiped his forehead, which was unpleasantly damp. 'What can I do? What can I do? I haven't

any notions left, and I can't think connectedly, but I must do something, or I shall go off my head.'

The hurried walk recommenced, Dick stopping every now and again to drag forth longneglected canvases

and old notebooks; for he turned to his work by instinct, as a thing that could not fail. 'You won't do, and

you won't do,' he said, at each inspection. 'No more soldiers. I couldn't paint 'em. Sudden death comes home

The day was failing, and Dick thought for a moment that the twilight of the blind had come upon him

unaware. 'Allah Almighty!' he cried despairingly, 'help me through the time of waiting, and I won't whine

There was no answer. Dick waited till he could regain some sort of control over himself. His hands were

shaking, and he prided himself on their steadiness; he could feel that his lips were quivering, and the sweat

was running down his face. He was lashed by fear, driven forward by the desire to get to work at once and

accomplish something, and maddened by the refusal of his brain to do more than repeat the news that he was

about to go blind. 'It's a humiliating exhibition,' he thought, 'and I'm glad Torp isn't here to see. The doctor

Then he heard the man speaking in the twilight, and, doglike, understood that his trouble stood off from

him 'Allah is good, Binkie. Not quite so gentle as we could wish, but we'll discuss that later. I think I see

my way to it now. All those studies of Bessie's head were nonsense, and they nearly brought your master into

a scrape. I hold the notion now as clear as crystal,"the Melancolia that transcends all wit." There shall be

Maisie in that head, because I shall never get Maisie; and Bess, of course, because she knows all about

Melancolia, though she doesn't know she knows; and there shall be some drawing in it, and it shall all end up

with a laugh. That's for myself. Shall she giggle or grin? No, she shall laugh right out of the canvas, and

every man and woman that ever had a sorrow of their own shallwhat is it the poem says?

"In all disastrous fight"? That's better than painting the thing merely to pique Maisie. I can do it now because

I have it inside me. Binkie, I'm going to hold you up by your tail. You're an omen. Come here.'

'Rather like holding a guineapig; but you're a brave little dog, and you don't yelp when you're hung up. It is

Binkie went to his own chair, and as often as he looked saw Dick walking up and down, rubbing his hands

and chuckling. That night Dick wrote a letter to Maisie full of the tenderest regard for her health, but saying

very little about his own, and dreamed of the Melancolia to be born. Not till morning did he remember that

He fell to work, whistling softly, and was swallowed up in the clean, clear joy of creation, which does not

come to man too often, lest he should consider himself the equal of his God, and so refuse to die at the

appointed time. He forgot Maisie, Torpenhow, and Binkie at his feet, but remembered to stir Bessie, who

needed very little stirring, into a tremendous rage, that he might watch the smouldering lights in her eyes.

He threw himself without reservation into his work, and did not think of the doom that was to overtake him,

for he was possessed with his notion, and the things of this world had no power upon him.

Dick waved his mahlstick in mystic circles and went to the sideboard for a drink. In the evening, when the

exaltation of the day had died down, he went to the sideboard again, and after some visits became convinced

that the eyedoctor was a liar, since he could still see everything very clearly.

He was of opinion that he would even make a home for Maisie, and that whether she liked it or not she

should be his wife. The mood passed next morning, but the sideboard and all upon it remained for his

Again he set to work, and his eyes troubled him with spots and dashes and blurs till he had taken counsel with

the sideboard, and the Melancolia both on the canvas and in his own mind appeared lovelier than ever. There

was a delightful sense of irresponsibility upon him, such as they feel who walking among their fellowmen

know that the deathsentence of disease is upon them, and, seeing that fear is but waste of the little time left,

Bessie arrived punctually always, and, though her voice seemed to Dick to come from a distance, her face

was always very near. The Melancolia began to flame on the canvas, in the likeness of a woman who had

known all the sorrow in the world and was laughing at it. It was true that the corners of the studio draped

themselves in gray film and retired into the darkness, that the spots in his eyes and the pains across his head

were very troublesome, and that Maisie's letters were hard to read and harder still to answer. He could not tell

her of his trouble, and he could not laugh at her accounts of her own Melancolia which was always going to

be finished. But the furious days of toil and the nights of wild dreams made amends for all, and the sideboard

Bessie was singularly dull. She used to shriek with rage when Dick stared at her between halfclosed eyes.

Torpenhow had been absent for six weeks. An incoherent note heralded his return. 'News! great news!' he

wrote. 'The Nilghai knows, and so does the Keneu. We're all back on Thursday. Get lunch and clean your

Dick showed Bessie the letter, and she abused him for that he had ever sent Torpenhow away and ruined her

'Well,' said Dick, brutally, 'you're better as you are, instead of making love to some drunken beast in the

'I don't know if that's any worse than sitting to a drunken beast in a studio. You haven't been sober for three

weeks. You've been soaking the whole time; and yet you pretend you're better than me!'

It was not long to wait. Torpenhow met Bessie on the staircase without a sign of feeling. He had news that

was more to him than many Bessies, and the Keneu and the Nilghai were trampling behind him, calling for

'Drinking like a fish,' Bessie whispered. 'He's been at it for nearly a month.' She followed the men stealthily to

They came into the studio, rejoicing, to be welcomed over effusively by a drawn, lined, shrunken, haggard

wreck,unshaven, bluewhite about the nostrils, stooping in the shoulders, and peering under his eyebrows

'All that's left of me. Sit down. Binkie's quite well, and I've been doing some good work.' He reeled where he

'You've done some of the worst work you've ever done in your life. Man alive, you're'

Torpenhow turned to his companions appealingly, and they left the room to find lunch elsewhere. Then he

spoke; but, since the reproof of a friend is much too sacred and intimate a thing to be printed, and since

Torpenhow used figures and metaphors which were unseemly, and contempt untranslatable, it will never be

known what was actually said to Dick, who blinked and winked and picked at his hands. After a time the

culprit began to feel the need of a little selfrespect. He was quite sure that he had not in any way departed

from virtue, and there were reasons, too, of which Torpenhow knew nothing. He would explain.

He rose, tried to straighten his shoulders, and spoke to the face he could hardly see.

'You are right,' he said. 'But I am right, too. After you went away I had some trouble with my eyes. So I went

to an oculist, and he turned a gasogeneI mean a gasengineinto my eye. That was very long ago. He

said, "Scar on the head,swordcut and optic nerve." Make a note of that. So I am going blind. I have some

work to do before I go blind, and I suppose that I must do it. I cannot see much now, but I can see best when I

am drunk. I did not know I was drunk till I was told, but I must go on with my work. If you want to see it,

there it is.' He pointed to the all but finished Melancolia and looked for applause.

Torpenhow said nothing, and Dick began to whimper feebly, for joy at seeing Torpenhow again, for grief at

misdeedsif indeed they were misdeedsthat made Torpenhow remote and unsympathetic, and for childish

vanity hurt, since Torpenhow had not given a word of praise to his wonderful picture.

Bessie looked through the keyhole after a long pause, and saw the two walking up and down as usual,

Hereat she said something so improper that it shocked even Binkie, who was dribbling patiently on the

'Do you mean to tell me that you can't see to work without whiskey? It's generally the other way about.'

'Then I give you my word of honour,' said Dick, speaking hurriedly through parched lips. 'Old man, I can

hardly see your face now. You've kept me sober for two days,if I ever was drunk,and I've done no work.

The spots and dots and the pains and things are crowding worse than ever. I swear I can see all right when

I'mwhen I'm moderately screwed, as you say. Give me three more sittings from Bessie and allthe stuff I

want, and the picture will be done. I can't kill myself in three days. It only means a touch of D. T. at the

'If I give you three days more will you promise me to stop work andthe other thing, whether the picture's

'I can't. You don't know what that picture means to me. But surely you could get the Nilghai to help you, and

knock me down and tie me up. I shouldn't fight for the whiskey, but I should for the work.'

Dick returned to his work, toiling as one possessed; and the yellow devil of whiskey stood by him and chased

away the spots in his eyes. The Melancolia was nearly finished, and was all or nearly all that he had hoped

she would be. Dick jested with Bessie, who reminded him that he was 'a drunken beast'; but the reproof did

'You can't understand, Bess. We are in sight of land now, and soon we shall lie back and think about what

we've done. I'll give you three months' pay when the picture's finished, and next time I have any more work

'No, it won't! I hate you, and I'll go on hating you. Mr. Torpenhow won't speak to me any more. He's always

Bessie did not say that she had again laid siege to Torpenhow, or that at the end of our passionate pleading he

had picked her up, given her a kiss, and put her outside the door with the recommendation not to be a little

fool. He spent most of his time in the company of the Nilghai, and their talk was of war in the near future, the

hiring of transports, and secret preparations among the dockyards. He did not wish to see Dick till the picture

'He's doing firstclass work,' he said to the Nilghai, 'and it's quite out of his regular line. But, for the matter of

'Never mind. Leave him alone. When he has come to his senses again we'll carry him off from this place and

let him breathe clean air. Poor Dick! I don't envy you, Torp, when his eyes fail.'

'Yes, it will be a case of "God help the man who's chained to our Davie." The worst is that we don't know

when it will happen, and I believe the uncertainty and the waiting have sent Dick to the whiskey more than

'He's at perfect liberty to grin if he can. He's dead. That's poor consolation now.'

'All finished!' he shouted. 'I've done it! Come in! Isn't she a beauty? Isn't she a darling? I've been down to hell

Torpenhow looked at the head of a woman who laughed,a fulllipped, holloweyed woman who laughed

'Who taught you how to do it?' said Torpenhow. 'The touch and notion have nothing to do with your regular

work. What a face it is! What eyes, and what insolence!' Unconsciously he threw back his head and laughed

with her. 'She's seen the game played out,I don't think she had a good time of it,and now she doesn't

'They'resome one else's. But isn't it good? Isn't it thundering good? Wasn't it worth the whiskey? I did it.

Alone I did it, and it's the best I can do.' He drew his breath sharply, and whispered, 'Just God! what could I

not do ten years hence, if I can do this now!By the way, what do you think of it, Bess?'

The girl was biting her lips. She loathed Torpenhow because he had taken no notice of her.

'I think it's just the horridest, beastliest thing I ever saw,' she answered, and turned away.

'More than you will be of that way of thinking, young woman.Dick, there's a sort of murderous, viperine

That's trickwork,' said Dick, chuckling with delight at being completely understood. 'I couldn't resist one

little bit of sheer swagger. It's a French trick, and you wouldn't understand; but it's got at by slewing round

the head a trifle, and a tiny, tiny foreshortening of one side of the face from the angle of the chin to the top of

the left ear. That, and deepening the shadow under the lobe of the ear. It was flagrant trickwork; but, having

'So will every man who has any sorrow of his own,' said Dick, slapping his thigh. 'He shall see his trouble

there, and, by the Lord Harry, just when he's feeling properly sorry for himself he shall throw back his head

and laugh,as she is laughing. I've put the life of my heart and the light of my eyes into her, and I don't care

what comes. . . . I'm tired,awfully tired. I think I'll get to sleep. Take away the whiskey, it has served its

turn, and give Bessie thirtysix quid, and three over for luck. Cover the picture.'

He dropped asleep in the long chair, hid face white and haggard, almost before he had finished the sentence.

Bessie tried to take Torpenhow's hand. 'Aren't you never going to speak to me any more?' she said; but

'What a stock of vanity the man has! I'll take him in hand tomorrow and make much of him. He deserves

'Nothing. I'll put things tidy here a little, and then I'll go. You couldn't give the that three months' pay now,

Torpenhow gave her a check and went to his own rooms. Bessie faithfully tidied up the studio, set the door

ajar for flight, emptied half a bottle of turpentine on a duster, and began to scrub the face of the Melancolia

viciously. The paint did not smudge quickly enough. She took a paletteknife and scraped, following each

stroke with the wet duster. In five minutes the picture was a formless, scarred muddle of colours. She threw

the paintstained duster into the studio stove, stuck out her tongue at the sleeper, and whispered, 'Bilked!' as

she turned to run down the staircase. She would never see Torpenhow any more, but she had at least done

harm to the man who had come between her and her desire and who used to make fun of her. Cashing the

check was the very cream of the jest to Bessie. Then the little privateer sailed across the Thames, to be

Dick slept till late in the evening, when Torpenhow dragged him off to bed. His eyes were as bright as his

voice was hoarse. 'Let's have another look at the picture,' he said, insistently as a child.

'Yougotobed,' said Torpenhow. 'You aren't at all well, though you mayn't know it. You're as jumpy

As he repassed through the studio, Torpenhow lifted the cloth above the picture, and almost betrayed himself

by outcries: 'Wiped out!scraped out and turped out! He's on the verge of jumps as it is. That's Bess,the

little fiend! Only a woman could have done that!with the ink not dry on the check, too! Dick will be raving

mad tomorrow. It was all my fault for trying to help gutterdevils. Oh, my poor Dick, the Lord is hitting

Dick could not sleep that night, partly for pure joy, and partly because the wellknown Catherinewheels

inside his eyes had given place to crackling volcanoes of manycoloured fire. 'Spout away,' he said aloud.

'I've done my work, and now you can do what you please.' He lay still, staring at the ceiling, the

longpentup delirium of drink in his veins, his brain on fire with racing thoughts that would not stay to be

considered, and his hands crisped and dry. He had just discovered that he was painting the face of the

Melancolia on a revolving dome ribbed with millions of lights, and that all his wondrous thoughts stood

embodied hundreds of feet below his tiny swinging plank, shouting together in his honour, when something

cracked inside his temples like an overstrained bowstring, the glittering dome broke inward, and he was alone

'I'll go to sleep. The room's very dark. Let's light a lamp and see how the Melancolia looks. There ought to

It was then that Torpenhow heard his name called by a voice that he did not know,in the rattling accents of

'He's looked at the picture,' was his first thought, as he hurried into the bedroom and found Dick sitting up

Dick clutched at his shoulder. 'Matter! I've been lying here for hours in the dark, and you never heard me.

Torpenhow held the candle within a foot of Dick's eyes, but there was no light in those eyes. He lit the gas,

and Dick heard the flame catch. The grip of his fingers on Torpenhow's shoulder made Torpenhow wince.

'Don't leave me. You wouldn't leave me alone now, would you? I can't see. D'you understand? It's

'Steady does it.' Torpenhow put his arm round Dick and began to rock him gently to and fro.

'That's good. Now don't talk. If I keep very quiet for a while, this darkness will lift. It seems just on the point

of breaking. H'sh!' Dick knit his brows and stared desperately in front of him. The night air was chilling

'Can you stay like that a minute?' he said. 'I'll get my dressinggown and some slippers.'

Dick clutched the bedhead with both hands and waited for the darkness to clear away. 'What a time you've

been!' he cried, when Torpenhow returned. 'It's as black as ever. What are you banging about in the

'Long chair,horseblanket,pillow. Going to sleep by you. Lie down now; you'll be better in the

'I shan't!' The voice rose to a wail. 'My God! I'm blind! I'm blind, and the darkness will never go away.' He

made as if to leap from the bed, but Torpenhow's arms were round him, and Torpenhow's chin was on his

shoulder, and his breath was squeezed out of him. He could only gasp, 'Blind!' and wriggle feebly.

'Steady, Dickie, steady!' said the deep voice in his ear, and the grip tightened. 'Bite on the bullet, old man, and

don't let them think you're afraid,' The grip could draw no closer. Both men were breathing heavily.

'Let me go,' he panted. 'You're cracking my ribs. Wewe mustn't let them think we're afraid, must we,all

'Yes,' said Dick, obediently. 'But would you mind letting me hold your hand? I feel as if I wanted something

Torpenhow thrust out a large and hairy paw from the long chair. Dick clutched it tightly, and in half an hour

had fallen asleep. Torpenhow withdrew his hand, and, stooping over Dick, kissed him lightly on the forehead,

as men do sometimes kiss a wounded comrade in the hour of death, to ease his departure.

In the gray dawn Torpenhow heard Dick talking to himself. He was adrift on the shoreless tides of delirium,

speaking very quickly 'It's a pity,a great pity; but it's helped, and it must be eaten, Master George.

Sufficient unto the day is the blindness thereof, and, further, putting aside all Melancolias and false humours,

it is of obvious notorietysuch as mine wasthat the queen can do no wrong. Torp doesn't know that. I'll

What a bungle those boatmen are making of the steamerropes! They'll have that fourinch hawser chafed

through in a minute. I told you sothere she goes! White foam on green water, and the steamer slewing

round. How good that looks! I'll sketch it. No, I can't. I'm afflicted with ophthalmia. That was one of the ten

plagues of Egypt, and it extends up the Nile in the shape of cataract. Ha! that's a joke, Torp. Laugh, you

graven image, and stand clear of the hawser. . . . It'll knock you into the water and make your dress all dirty,

'She'll be sure to say it's my fault if you get muddy, and you're quite near enough to the breakwater. Maisie,

Low and to the left, dear. But you've no conviction. Don't be angry, darling. I'd cut my hand off if it would

'Now we mustn't listen. Here's an island shouting across seas of misunderstanding with a vengeance. But it's

The babble continued. It all bore upon Maisie. Sometimes Dick lectured at length on his craft, then he cursed

himself for his folly in being enslaved. He pleaded to Maisie for a kissonly one kissbefore she went

away, and called to her to come back from VitrysurMarne, if she would; but through all his ravings he

Torpenhow listened attentively, and learned every detail of Dick's life that had been hidden from him. For

three days Dick raved through the past, and then a natural sleep. 'What a strain he has been running under,

poor chap!' said Torpenhow. 'Dick, of all men, handing himself over like a dog! And I was lecturing him on

arrogance! I ought to have known that it was no use to judge a man. But I did it. What a demon that girl must

be! Dick's given her his life,confound him!and she's given him one kiss apparently.'

'Torp,' said Dick, from the bed, 'go out for a walk. You've been here too long. I'll get up. Hi! This is

Torpenhow helped him into his clothes and led him to the big chair in the studio. He sat quietly waiting under

strained nerves for the darkness to lift. It did not lift that day, nor the next. Dick adventured on a voyage

round the walls. He hit his shins against the stove, and this suggested to him that it would be better to crawl

'I'm trying to get the geography of my new possessions,' said he. 'D'you remember that nigger you gouged in

the square? Pity you didn't keep the odd eye. It would have been useful. Any letters for me? Give me all the

ones in fat gray envelopes with a sort of crown thing outside. They're of no importance.'

Torpenhow gave him a letter with a black M. on the envelope flap. Dick put it into his pocket. There was

nothing in it that Torpenhow might not have read, but it belonged to himself and to Maisie, who would never

'When she finds that I don't write, she'll stop writing. It's better so. I couldn't be any use to her now,' Dick

argued, and the tempter suggested that he should make known his condition. Every nerve in him revolted. 'I

have fallen low enough already. I'm not going to beg for pity. Besides, it would be cruel to her.' He strove to

put Maisie out of his thoughts; but the blind have many opportunities for thinking, and as the tides of his

strength came back to him in the long employless days of dead darkness, Dick's soul was troubled to the core.

Another letter, and another, came from Maisie. Then there was silence, and Dick sat by the window, the pulse

of summer in the air, and pictured her being won by another man, stronger than himself. His imagination, the

keener for the dark background it worked against, spared him no single detail that might send him raging up

and down the studio, to stumble over the stove that seemed to be in four places at once. Worst of all, tobacco

would not taste in the darkness. The arrogance of the man had disappeared, and in its place were settled

despair that Torpenhow knew, and blind passion that Dick confided to his pillow at night. The intervals

between the paroxysms were filled with intolerable waiting and the weight of intolerable darkness.

'Come out into the Park,' said Torpenhow. 'You haven't stirred out since the beginning of things.'

'What's the use? There's no movement in the dark; and, besides,'he paused irresolutely at the head of the

The roar of the streets filled Dick with nervous terror, and he clung to Torpenhow's arm. 'Fancy having to feel

for a gutter with your foot!' he said petulantly, as he turned into the Park. 'Let's curse God and die.'

'Sentries are forbidden to pay unauthorised compliments. By Jove, there are the Guards!'

Dick's figure straightened. 'Let's get near 'em. Let's go in and look. Let's get on the grass and run. I can smell

'Mind the low railing. That's all right!' Torpenhow kicked out a tuft of grass with his heel. 'Smell that,' he

said. 'Isn't it good?' Dick sniffed luxuriously. 'Now pick up your feet and run.' They approached as near to the

regiment as was possible. The clank of bayonets being unfixed made Dick's nostrils quiver.

'Felt it. Oh, my men!my beautiful men!' He edged forward as though he could see. 'I could draw those

'Huh! I'm not a new charger. It's the silences that hurt. Nearer, Torp!nearer! Oh, my God, what wouldn't I

He could hear the armed life almost within reach of him, could hear the slings tighten across the bandsman's

The drumsticks fell with a boom, and the men swung forward to the crash of the band. Dick felt the wind of

the massed movement in his face, heard the maddening tramp of feet and the friction of the pouches on the

belts. The big drum pounded out the tune. It was a musichall refrain that made a perfect quickstep

He must be a man of decent height, He must be a man of weight, He must come home on a Saturday night In

a thoroughly sober state; He must know how to love me, And he must know how to kiss; And if he's enough

'What's the matter?' said Torpenhow, as he saw Dick's head fall when the last of the regiment had departed.

'Nothing. I feel a little bit out of the running,that's all. Torp, take me back. Why did you bring me out?'?

THE NILGHAI was angry with Torpenhow. Dick had been sent to bed,blind men are ever under the

orders of those who can see,and since he had returned from the Park had fluently sworn at Torpenhow

because he was alive, and all the world because it was alive and could see, while he, Dick, was dead in the

death of the blind, who, at the best, are only burdens upon their associates. Torpenhow had said something

about a Mrs. Gummidge, and Dick had retired in a black fury to handle and rehandle three unopened letters

Behind him sat the Keneu, the Great War Eagle, and between them lay a large map embellished with

'I was wrong about the Balkans,' said the Nilghai. 'But I'm not wrong about this business. The whole of our

work in the Southern Soudan must be done over again. The public doesn't care, of course, but the government

does, and they are making their arrangements quietly. You know that as well as I do.'

'I remember how the people cursed us when our troops withdrew from Omdurman. It was bound to crop up

sooner or later. But I can't go,' said Torpenhow. He pointed through the open door; it was a hot night. 'Can

The Keneu purred above his pipe like a large and very happy cat 'Don't blame you in the least. It's

uncommonly good of you, and all the rest of it, but every maneven you, Torpmust consider his work. I

know it sounds brutal, but Dick's out of the race,down,gastados expended, finished, done for. He has a

little money of his own. He won't starve, and you can't pull out of your slide for his sake. Think of your own

'That was because he signed his name to everything he did. It's all ended now. You must hold yourself in

readiness to move out. You can command your own prices, and you do better work than any three of us.'

'Don't tell me how tempting it is. I'll stay here to look after Dick for a while. He's as cheerful as a bear with a

The Nilghai said something uncomplimentary about softheaded fools who throw away their careers for

other fools. Torpenhow flushed angrily. The constant strain of attendance on Dick had worn his nerves thin.

'There remains a third fate,' said the Keneu, thoughtfully. 'Consider this, and be not larger fools than

necessary. Dick isor rather wasan ablebodied man of moderate attractions and a certain amount of

'Oho!' said the Nilghai, who remembered an affair at Cairo. 'I begin to see,Torp, I'm sorry.'

Torpenhow nodded forgiveness: 'You were more sorry when he cut you out, though.Go on, Keneu.'

'I've often thought, when I've seen men die out in the desert, that if the news could be sent through the world,

and the means of transport were quick enough, there would be one woman at least at each man's bedside.'

'There would be some mighty quaint revelations. Let us be grateful things are as they are,' said the Nilghai.

'Let us rather reverently consider whether Torp's threecornered ministrations are exactly what Dick needs

'Lay the matter before the board. We are all Dick's friends here. You've been most in his life.'

Then Torpenhow told a tale in plain words, as a special correspondent who knows how to make a verbal

'I give the facts. He says nothing about it now, but he sits fumbling three letters from her when he thinks I'm

'Oh yes! Write to her,I don't know her full name, remember,and ask her to accept him out of pity. I

believe you once told Dick you were sorry for him, Nilghai. You remember what happened, eh? Go into the

bedroom and suggest full confession and an appeal to this Maisie girl, whoever she is. I honestly believe he'd

'Torpenhow's course is perfectly clear,' said the Keneu. 'He will go to VitrysurMarne, which is on the

BezieresLandes Railway,single track from Tourgas. The Prussians shelled it out in '70 because there was

a poplar on the top of a hill eighteen hundred yards from the church spire There's a squadron of cavalry

quartered there,or ought to be. Where this studio Torp spoke about may be I cannot tell. That is Torp's

business. I have given him his route. He will dispassionately explain the situation to the girl, and she will

come back to Dick,the more especially because, to use Dick's words, "there is nothing but her damned

Dick never lost his head for figures, even in his delirium. You haven't the shadow of an excuse for not going,'

Torpenhow looked very uncomfortable. 'But it's absurd and impossible. I can't drag her back by the hair.'

'Our businessthe business for which we draw our moneyis to do absurd and impossible

things,generally with no reason whatever except to amuse the public. Here we have a reason. The rest

doesn't matter. I shall share these rooms with the Nilghai till Torpenhow returns. There will be a batch of

unbridled "specials" coming to town in a little while, and these will serve as their headquarters. Another

reason for sending Torpenhow away. Thus Providence helps those who help others, and'here the Keneu

dropped his measured speech'we can't have you tied by the leg to Dick when the trouble begins. It's your

'He will,worse luck! I can but go and try. I can't conceive a woman in her senses refusing Dick.'

'Talk that out with the girl. I have seen you wheedle an angry Mahdieh woman into giving you dates. This

won't be a tithe as difficult. You had better not be here tomorrow afternoon, because the Nilghai and I will

'Poor chap!' said Torpenhow to himself. 'I must have been sitting on his nerves lately. He wants a lighter

step.' Then, aloud, 'Very well. Since you're so independent, I'm going off for four or five days. Say goodbye

Dick's face fell. 'You won't be longer than a week at the outside? I know I'm touched in the temper, but I can't

'Can't you? You'll have to do without me in a little time, and you'll be glad I'm gone.'

Dick felt his way back to the big chair, and wondered what these things might mean. He did not wish to be

tended by the housekeeper, and yet Torpenhow's constant tenderness jarred on him. He did not exactly know

what he wanted. The darkness would not lift, and Maisie's unopened letters felt worn and old from much

handling. He could never read them for himself as long as life endured; but Maisie might have sent him some

fresh ones to play with. The Nilghai entered with a gift,a piece of red modellingwax. He fancied that

Dick might find interest in using his hands. Dick poked and patted the stuff for a few minutes, and, 'Is it like

anything in the world?' he said drearily. 'Take it away. I may get the touch of the blind in fifty years. Do you

The Nilghai knew nothing. 'We're staying in his rooms till he comes back. Can we do anything for you?'

'I'd like to be left alone, please. Don't think I'm ungrateful; but I'm best alone.'

The Nilghai chuckled, and Dick resumed his drowsy brooding and sullen rebellion against fate. He had long

since ceased to think about the work he had done in the old days, and the desire to do more work had

departed from him. He was exceedingly sorry for himself, and the completeness of his tender grief soothed

him. But his soul and his body cried for MaisieMaisie who would understand. His mind pointed out that

Maisie, having her own work to do, would not care. His experience had taught him that when money was

exhausted women went away, and that when a man was knocked out of the race the others trampled on him.

'Then at the least,' said Dick, in reply, 'she could use me as I used Binat,for some sort of a study. I wouldn't

ask more than to be near her again, even though I knew that another man was making love to her. Ugh! what

'When we gogogo away from here, Our creditors will weep and they will wail, Our absence much

regretting when they find that they've been getting Out of England by next Tuesday's Indian mail.'?

Following the trampling of feet, slamming of Torpenhow's door, and the sound of voices in strenuous debate,

some one squeaked, 'And see, you good fellows, I have found a new waterbottlefirs'class patenteh,

Dick sprang to his feet. He knew the voice well. 'That's Cassavetti, come back from the Continent. Now I

The Nilghai commanded silence in vain. 'That's for my sake,' Dick said bitterly. 'The birds are getting ready

to fly, and they wouldn't tell me. I can hear MortenSutherland and Mackaye. Half the War Correspondents

He stumbled across the landing and plunged into Torpenhow's room. He could feel that it was full of men.

'Where's the trouble?' said he. 'In the Balkans at last? Why didn't some one tell me?'

'You lucky dogs! Let me sit here while you talk. I shan't be a skeleton at the feast.Cassavetti, where are

Dick was led into a chair. He heard the rustle of the maps, and the talk swept forward, carrying him with it.

Everybody spoke at once, discussing press censorships, railwayroutes, transport, watersupply, the

capacities of generals,these in language that would have horrified a trusting public,rangint, asserting,

denouncing, and laughing at the top of their voices. There was the glorious certainty of war in the Soudan at

any moment. The Nilghai said so, and it was well to be in readiness. The Keneu had telegraphed to Cairo for

horses; Cassavetti had stolen a perfectly inaccurate list of troops that would be ordered forward, and was

reading it out amid profane interruptions, and the Keneu introduced to Dick some man unknown who would

be employed as war artist by the Central Southern Syndicate. 'It's his first outing,' said the Keneu. 'Give him

'Oh, those camels!' groaned Cassavetti. 'I shall learn to ride him again, and now I am so much all soft! Listen,

you good fellows. I know your military arrangement very well. There will go the Royal Argalshire

'Sit down,' said the Nilghai. 'The lists aren't even made out in the War Office.'

Then the outcries redoubled, and grew mixed, thus: 'How many Egyptian troops will they use?God help

the Fellaheen!There's a railway in Plumstead marshes doing duty as a fivescourt.We shall have the

SuakinBerber line built at last.Canadian voyageurs are too careful. Give me a halfdrunk Krooman in a

whaleboat.Who commands the Desert column?No, they never blew up the big rock in the Ghineh

bend. We shall have to be hauled up, as usual.Somebody tell me if there's an Indian contingent, or I'll

break everybody's head.Don't tear the map in two.It's a war of occupation, I tell you, to connect with the

African companies in the South.There's Guineaworm in most of the wells on that route.' Then the

Nilghai, despairing of peace, bellowed like a foghorn and beat upon the table with both hands.

'Torp's in abeyance just now. He's off lovemaking somewhere, I suppose,' said the Nilghai.

'Is he?' said Dick, with an oath. 'He won't. I'm not much good now, but if you and the Nilghai hold him down

I'll engage to trample on him till he sees reason. He'll stay behind, indeed! He's the best of you all. There'll be

'I'll give you one piece of advice,' Dick answered, moving towards the door. 'If you happen to be cut over the

Tell the man to go on cutting. You'll find it cheapest in the end. Thanks for letting me look in.'

'There's grit in Dick,' said the Nilghai, an hour later, when the room was emptied of all save the Keneu.

'It was the sacred call of the wartrumpet. Did you notice how he answered to it? Poor fellow! Let's look at

The excitement of the talk had died away. Dick was sitting by the studio table, with his head on his arms,

'It hurts,' he moaned. 'God forgive me, but it hurts cruelly; and yet, y'know, the world has a knack of spinning

Maisie put her elbows on the windowsill and looked at the moonlight on the straight, poplarflanked road.

Summer had come upon VitrysurMarne and parched it to the bone. The grass was dryburnt in the

meadows, the clay by the bank of the river was caked to brick, the roadside flowers were long since dead, and

the roses in the garden hung withered on their stalks. The heat in the little low bedroom under the eaves was

almost intolerable. The very moonlight on the wall of Kami's studio across the road seemed to make the night

hotter, and the shadow of the big bellhandle by the closed gate cast a bar of inky black that caught Maisie's

'Horrid thing! It should be all white,' she murmured. 'And the gate isn't in the middle of the wall, either. I

Maisie was hard to please at that hour. First, the heat of the past few weeks had worn her down; secondly, her

work, and particularly the study of a female head intended to represent the Melancolia and not finished in

time for the Salon, was unsatisfactory; thirdly, Kami had said as much two days before; fourthly,but so

completely fourthly that it was hardly worth thinking about,Dick, her property, had not written to her for

more than six weeks. She was angry with the heat, with Kami, and with her work, but she was exceedingly

She had written to him three times,each time proposing a fresh treatment of her Melancolia. Dick had

taken no notice of these communications. She had resolved to write no more. When she returned to England

in the autumnfor her pride's sake she could not return earliershe would speak to him. She missed the

Sunday afternoon conferences more than she cared to admit. All that Kami said was, 'Continuez,

mademoiselle, continuez toujours,' and he had been repeating the wearisome counsel through the hot

summer, exactly like a cicada,an old gray cicada in a black alpaca coat, white trousers, and a huge felt hat.

But Dick had tramped masterfully up and down her little studio north of the cool green London park, and had

said things ten times worse than continuez, before he snatched the brush out of her hand and showed her

where the error lay. His last letter, Maisie remembered, contained some trivial advice about not sketching in

the sun or drinking water at wayside farmhouses; and he had said that not once, but three times,as if he did

But what was he doing, that he could not trouble to write? A murmur of voices in the road made her lean

from the window. A cavalryman of the little garrison in the town was talking to Kami's cook. The moonlight

glittered on the scabbard of his sabre, which he was holding in his hand lest it should clank inopportunely.

The cook's cap cast deep shadows on her face, which was close to the conscript's. He slid his arm round her

'What's that?' said the redhaired girl, who was tossing uneasily outside her bed.

'They've gone away now.' She leaned out of the window again, and put a shawl over her nightgown to guard

against chills. There was a very small nightbreeze abroad, and a sunbaked rose below nodded its head as

one who knew unutterable secrets. Was it possible that Dick should turn his thoughts from her work and his

own and descend to the degradation of Suzanne and the conscript? He could not! The rose nodded its head

and one leaf therewith. It looked like a naughty little devil scratching its ear.

Dick could not, 'because,' thought Maisie, 'he is mind,mine,mine. He said he was. I'm sure I don't care

what he does. It will only spoil his work if he does; and it will spoil mine too.'

The rose continued to nod it the futile way peculiar to flowers. There was no earthly reason why Dick should

not disport himself as he chose, except that he was called by Providence, which was Maisie, to assist Maisie

in her work. And her work was the preparation of pictures that went sometimes to English provincial

exhibitions, as the notices in the scrapbook proved, and that were invariably rejected by the Salon when

Kami was plagued into allowing her to send them up. Her work in the future, it seemed, would be the

preparation of pictures on exactly similar lines which would be rejected in exactly the same way The

redhaired girl threshed distressfully across the sheets. 'It's too hot to sleep,' she moaned; and the interruption

Exactly the same way. Then she would divide her years between the little studio in England and Kami's big

studio at VitrysurMarne. No, she would go to another master, who should force her into the success that

was her right, if patient toil and desperate endeavour gave one a right to anything. Dick had told her that he

had worked ten years to understand his craft. She had worked ten years, and ten years were nothing. Dick had

said that ten years were nothing,but that was in regard to herself only. He had saidthis very man who

could not find time to writethat he would wait ten years for her, and that she was bound to come back to

him sooner or later. He had said this in the absurd letter about sunstroke and diphtheria; and then he had

stopped writing. He was wandering up and down moonlit streets, kissing cooks. She would like to lecture him

now,not in her nightgown, of course, but properly dressed, severely and from a height. Yet if he was

kissing other girls he certainly would not care whether she lecture him or not. He would laugh at her. Very

The millwheel of thought swung round slowly, that no section of it might be slurred over, and the

Maisie put her chin in her hands and decided that there could be no doubt whatever of the villainy of Dick.

To justify herself, she began, unwomanly, to weigh the evidence. There was a boy, and he had said he loved

her. And he kissed her,kissed her on the cheek,by a yellow seapoppy that nodded its head exactly like

the maddening dry rose in the garden. Then there was an interval, and men had told her that they loved

herjust when she was busiest with her work. Then the boy came back, and at their very second meeting

had told her that he loved her. Then he had But there was no end to the things he had done. He had

given her his time and his powers. He had spoken to her of Art, housekeeping, technique, teacups, the abuse

of pickles as a stimulant,that was rude,sable hairbrushes,he had given her the best in her

stock,she used them daily; he had given her advice that she profited by, and now and againa look. Such

a look! The look of a beaten hound waiting for the word to crawl to his mistress's feet. In return she had given

him nothing whatever, excepthere she brushed her mouth against the openwork sleeve f her

nightgownthe privilege of kissing her once. And on the mouth, too. Disgraceful! Was that not enough, and

more than enough? and if it was not, had he not cancelled the debt by not writing andprobably kissing

other girls? 'Maisie, you'll catch a chill. Do go and lie down,' said the wearied voice of her companion. 'I can't

Maisie shrugged her shoulders and did not answer. She was reflecting on the meannesses of Dick, and on

other meannesses with which he had nothing to do. The moonlight would not let her sleep. It lay on the

skylight of the studio across the road in cold silver; she stared at it intently and her thoughts began to slide

one into the other. The shadow of the big bellhandle in the wall grew short, lengthened again, and faded out

as the moon went down behind the pasture and a hare came limping home across the road. Then the

dawnwind washed through the upland grasses, and brought coolness with it, and the cattle lowed by the

droughtshrunk river. Maisie's head fell forward on the windowsill, and the tangle of black hair covered her

'Yes, dear; yes, dear.' She staggered to her bed like a wearied child, and as she buried her face in the pillows

Day brought the routine of the studio, the smell of paint and turpentine, and the monotone wisdom of Kami,

who was a leaden artist, but a golden teacher if the pupil were only in sympathy with him. Maisie was not in

She knew when it was coming; for Kami would gather his black alpaca coat into a bunch behind him, and,

with faded flue eyes that saw neither pupils nor canvas, look back into the past to recall the history of one

Binat. 'You have all done not so badly,' he would say. 'But you shall remember that it is not enough to have

the method, and the art, and the power, nor even that which is touch, but you shall have also the conviction

that nails the work to the wall. Of the so many I taught,'here the students would begin to unfix

drawingpins or get their tubes together,'the very so many that I have taught, the best was Binat. All that

comes of the study and the work and the knowledge was to him even when he came. After he left me he

should have done all that could be done with the colour, the form, and the knowledge. Only, he had not the

conviction. So today I hear no more of Binat,the best of my pupils,and that is long ago. So today, too,

you will be glad to hear no more of me. Continuez, mesdemoiselles, and, above all, with conviction.'

He went into the garden to smoke and mourn over the lost Binat as the pupils dispersed to their several

Maisie looked at her very unhappy Melancolia, restrained a desire to grimace before it, and was hurrying

across the road to write a letter to Dick, when she was aware of a large man on a white troophorse. How

Torpenhow had managed in the course of twenty hours to find his way to the hearts of the cavalry officers in

quarters at VitrysurMarne, to discuss with them the certainty of a glorious revenge for France, to reduce

the colonel to tears of pure affability, and to borrow the best horse in the squadron for the journey to Kami's

'I beg your pardon,' said he. 'It seems an absurd question to ask, but the fact is that I don't know her by any

'I ought to introduce myself,' he said, as the horse capered in the blinding white dust. 'My name is

Torpenhow. Dick Heldar is my best friend, andandthe fact is that he has gone blind.'

Maisie lifted up her face, and it was pearly white. 'No! No! Not blind! I won't have him blind!'

'Oh, no! The Paris train doesn't go through this place till tonight. There will be ample time.'

'Certainly not. Dick wouldn't do that sort of thing. He's sitting in his studio, turning over some letters that he

There was a sound of choking from the sunhat. Maisie bowed her head and went into the cottage, where the

'Dick's blind!' said Maisie, taking her breath quickly as she steadied herself against a chairback. 'My Dick's

'A man has come from England to tell me. He hasn't written to me for six weeks.'

'Think! I should go back to London and see him and I should kiss his eyes and kiss them and kiss them until

they got well again! If you don't go I shall. Oh, what am I talking about? You wicked little idiot! Go to him at

Torpenhow's neck was blistering, but he preserved a smile of infinite patience as Maisie's appeared

'You will be at Vitry Station, then, at seven this evening.' This was an order delivered by one who was used to

being obeyed. Maisie said nothing, but she felt grateful that there was no chance of disputing with this big

man who took everything for granted and managed a squealing horse with one hand. She returned to the

redhaired girl, who was weeping bitterly, and between tears, kisses,very few of those,menthol,

Thought might come afterwards. Her present duty was to go to Dick,Dick who owned the wondrous friend

'I? Oh, I shall stay here andfinish your Melancolia,' she said, smiling pitifully. 'Write to me afterwards.'

That night there ran a legend through VitrysurMarne of a mad Englishman, doubtless suffering from

sunstroke, who had drunk all the officers of the garrison under the table, had borrowed a horse from the lines,

and had then and there eloped, after the English custom, with one of those more mad English girls who drew

'They are very droll,' said Suzanne to the conscript in the moonlight by the studio wall. 'She walked always

with those big eyes that saw nothing, and yet she kisses me on both cheeks as though she were my sister, and

The conscript levied a contribution on both gifts; for he prided himself on being a good soldier.

Torpenhow spoke very little to Maisie during the journey to Calais; but he was careful to attend to all her

wants, to get her a compartment entirely to herself, and to leave her alone. He was amazed of the ease with

'The safest thing would be to let her think things out. By Dick's showing,when he was off his head,she

must have ordered him about very thoroughly. Wonder how she likes being under orders.'

Maisie never told. She sat in the empty compartment often with her eyes shut, that she might realise the

sensation of blindness. It was an order that she should return to London swiftly, and she found herself at last

almost beginning to enjoy the situation. This was better than looking after luggage and a redhaired friend

who never took any interest in her surroundings. But there appeared to be a feeling in the air that she,

Maisie,of all people,was in disgrace. Therefore she justified her conduct to herself with great success,

till Torpenhow came up to her on the steamer and without preface began to tell the story of Dick's blindness,

suppressing a few details, but dwelling at length on the miseries of delirium. He stopped before he reached

the end, as though he had lost interest in the subject, and went forward to smoke. Maisie was furious with

She was hurried on from Dover to London almost before she could ask for breakfast, andshe was past any

feeling of indignation nowwas bidden curtly to wait in a hall at the foot of some leadcovered stairs while

Torpenhow went up to make inquiries. Again the knowledge that she was being treated like a naughty little

girl made her pale cheeks flame. It was all Dick's fault for being so stupid as to go blind.

Torpenhow led her up to a shut door, which he opened very softly. Dick was sitting by the window, with his

chin on his chest. There were three envelopes in his hand, and he turned them over and over. The big man

who gave orders was no longer by her side, and the studio door snapped behind her.

Dick thrust the letters into his pocket as he heard the sound. 'Hullo, Topr! Is that you? I've been so lonely.'

His voice had taken the peculiar flatness of the blind. Maisie pressed herself up into a corner of the room. Her

heart was beating furiously, and she put one hand on her breast to keep it quiet. Dick was staring directly at

Shutting her eyes in a railway carriage to open them when she pleased was child's play. This man was blind

'Torp, is that you? They said you were coming.' Dick looked puzzled and a little irritated at the silence.

'No; it's only me,' was the answer, in a strained little whisper. Maisie could hardly move her lips.

'H'm!' said Dick, composedly, without moving. 'This is a new phenomenon. Darkness I'm getting used to; but

Was he mad, then, as well as blind, that he talked to himself? Maisie's heart beat more wildly, and she

breathed in gasps. Dick rose and began to feel his way across the room, touching each table and chair as he

passed. Once he caught his foot on a rug, and swore, dropping on his knees to feel what the obstruction might

be. Maisie remembered him walking in the Park as though all the earth belonged to him, tramping up and

down her studio two months ago, and flying up the gangway of the Channel steamer. The beating of her heart

was making her sick, and Dick was coming nearer, guided by the sound of her breathing. She put out a hand

mechanically to ward him off or to draw him to herself, she did not know which. It touched his chest, and he

'Oh, Dick, I'm so sorry! I've come to tell you, and Let me take you back to your chair.'

'Don't! I'm not a child. You only do that out of pity. I never meant to tell you anything about it. I'm no good

Maisie watched him, and the fear went out of her heart, to be followed by a very bitter shame. He had spoken

a truth that had been hidden from the girl through every step of the impetuous flight to London; for he was,

indeed, down and done formasterful no longer but rather a little abject; neither an artist stronger than she,

nor a man to be looked up toonly some blind one that sat in a chair and seemed on the point of crying. She

was immensely and unfeignedly sorry for himmore sorry than she had ever been for any one in her life, but

So she stood still and felt ashamed and a little hurt, because she had honestly intended that her journey should

end triumphantly; and now she was only filled with pity most startlingly distinct from love.

'Well?' said Dick, his face steadily turned away. 'I never meant to worry you any more. What's the matter?'

He was conscious that Maisie was catching her breath, but was as unprepared as herself for the torrent of

emotion that followed. She had dropped into a chair and was sobbing with her face hidden in her hands.

Still the sobbing continued. It is not good to realise that you have failed in the hour of trial or flinched before

'I do despise myselfindeed I do. But I can't. Oh, Dickie, you wouldn't ask mewould you?' wailed Maisie.

She looked up for a minute, and by chance it happened that Dick's eyes fell on hers. The unshaven face was

very white and set, and the lips were trying to force themselves into a smile. But it was the wornout eyes

that Maisie feared. Her Dick had gone blind and left in his place some one that she could hardly recognise till

What's the use of worrying? For pity's sake don't cry like that; it isn't worth it.'

'You don't know how I hate myself. Oh, Dick, help mehelp me!' The passion of tears had grown beyond

her control and was beginning to alarm the man. He stumbled forward and put his arm round her, and her

'Hush, dear, hush! Don't cry. You're quite right, and you've nothing to reproach yourself withyou never

had. You're only a little upset by the journey, and I don't suppose you've had any breakfast. What a brute

When you're better you shall go away and get something to eat. What sort of a passage did you have coming

Maisie was crying more subduedly, for the first time in her life glad that she had something to lean against.

Dick patted her on the shoulder tenderly but clumsily, for he was not quite sure where her shoulder might be.

She drew herself out of his arms at last and waited, trembling and most unhappy. He had felt his way to the

window to put the width of the room between them, and to quiet a little the tumult in his heart.

'Isn'tisn't there anything I could do for you, then? I'll stay here in England to do it, if you like. Perhaps I

'I think not, dear. It would be kindest not to see me any more, please. I don't want to seem rude, butdon't

He was conscious that he could not bear himself as a man if the strain continued much longer.

'Nonsense. You've nothing to worry about; I'd tell you if you had. Wait a moment, dear. I've got something to

give you first. I meant it for you ever since this little trouble began. It's my Melancolia; she was a beauty

when I last saw her. You can keep her for me, and if ever you're poor you can sell her. She's worth a few

hundreds at any state of the market.' He groped among his canvases. 'She's framed in black. Is this a black

He turned a scarred formless muddle of paint towards Maisie, and the eyes strained as though they would

catch her wonder and surprise. One thing and one thing only could she do for him.

The voice was fuller and more rounded, because the man knew he was speaking of his best work. Maisie

looked at the blur, and a lunatic desire to laugh caught her by the throat. But for Dick's sakewhatever this

mad blankness might meanshe must make no sign. Her voice choked with hardheld tears as she

He heard the little hysterical gulp and took it for tribute. 'Won't you have it, then? I'll send it over to your

'I? Oh yesthank you. Ha! ha!' If she did not fly at once the laughter that was worse than tears would kill

her. She turned and ran, choking and blinded, down the staircases that were empty of life to take refuge in a

cab and go to her house across the Parks. There she sat down in the dismantled drawingroom and thought of

Dick in his blindness, useless till the end of life, and of herself in her own eyes. Behind the sorrow, the

shame, and the humiliation, lay fear of the cold wrath of the redhaired girl when Maisie should return.

Maisie had never feared her companion before. Not until she found herself saying, 'Well, he never asked me,'

* * * * * * For Dick was reserved more searching torment. He could not realise at first that Maisie, whom he

had ordered to go had left him without a word of farewell. He was savagely angry against Torpenhow, who

had brought upon him this humiliation and troubled his miserable peace. Then his dark hour came and he was

alone with himself and his desires to get what help he could from the darkness. The queen could do no

wrong, but in following the right, so far as it served her work, she had wounded her one subject more than his

'It's all I had and I've lost it,' he said, as soon as the misery permitted clear thinking. 'And Torp will think that

he has been so infernally clever that I shan't have the heart to tell him. I must think this out quietly.'

'Hullo!' said Torpenhow, entering the studio after Dick had enjoyed two hours of thought. 'I'm back. Are you

'Torp, I don't know what to say. Come here.' Dick coughed huskily, wondering, indeed, what he should say,

'What's the need for saying anything? Get up and tramp.' Torpenhow was perfectly satisfied.

They walked up and down as of custom, Torpenhow's hand on Dick's shoulder, and Dick buried in his own

'You shouldn't go off your head if you want to keep secrets, Dickie. It was absolutely impertinent on my part;

but if you'd seen me rocketing about on a halftrained French troophorse under a blazing sun you'd have

'I knowthe row in the Southern Soudan. I surprised their councils the other day, and it made me unhappy.

'Haven't signed any contracts yet. I wanted to see how your business would turn out.'

'Would you have stayed with me, then, ifthings had gone wrong?' He put his question cautiously.

'Oh yees! . . . Well, do you attend the function tonight? We shall be half screwed before the morning. All

'I don't think I will, old man, if it's all the same to you. I'll stay quiet here.'

That night there was a tumult on the stairs. The correspondents poured in from theatre, dinner, and

musichall to Torpenhow's room that they might discuss their plan of campaign in the event of military

operations becoming a certainty. Torpenhow, the Keneu,, and the Nilghai had bidden all the men they had

worked with to the orgy; and Mr. Beeton, the housekeeper, declared that never before in his checkered

experience had he seen quite such a fancy lot of gentlemen. They waked the chambers with shoutings and

song; and the elder men were quite as bad as the younger. For the chances of war were in front of them, and

Sitting in his own room a little perplexed by the noise across the landing, Dick suddenly began to laugh to

'When one comes to think of it the situation is intensely comic. Maisie's quite rightpoor little thing. I didn't

know she could cry like that before; but now I know what Torp thinks, I'm sure he'd be quite fool enough to

stay at home and try to console meif he knew. Besides, it isn't nice to own that you've been thrown over

like a broken chair. I must carry this business through aloneas usual. If there isn't a war, and Torp finds

out, I shall look foolish, that's all. If there is a way I mustn't interfere with another man's chances. Business is

'Virtuous child. That's the effect of emotion on the young. All my congratulations, Dick. I also was concerned

The little dog entered on elastic feet, riotous from having been made much of all the evening. He had helped

to sing the choruses; but scarcely inside the studio he realised that this was no place for tailwagging, and

settled himself on Dick's lap till it was bedtime. Then he went to bed with Dick, who counted every hour as it

struck, and rose in the morning with a painfully clear head to receive Torpenhow's more formal

'Yes. With the old Central Southern as usual. They wired, and I accepted on better terms than before.'

'Well, that's not a pretty way of saying you're glad to get rid of me. But men in your condition are allowed to

'I didn't mean that. Will you get a hundred pounds cashed for me before you leave?'

Torpenhow brought him the money, counted it out in fives and tens, and carefully put it away in the writing

'Now I suppose I shall have to listen to his ravings about his girl until I go. Heaven send us patience with a

But never a word did Dick say of Maisie or marriage. He hung in the doorway of Torpenhow's room when

the latter was packing and asked innumerable questions about the coming campaign, till Torpenhow began to

'You're a secretive animal, Dickie, and you consume your own smoke, don't you?' he said on the last evening.

'Good Heavens! You're the most unaccountable creature! Hasn't it occurred to you that you're going to be

And the next day Torpenhow bade him goodbye and left him to the loneliness he had so much desired.

'No!' Dick had just waked to another morning of blank despair and his temper was of the shortest.

''Tain't my regular business, o' course, sir; and what I say is, "Mind your own business and let other people

Torpenhow went away he give me to understand, like, that you might be moving into a house of your own, so

to speaka sort of house with rooms upstairs and downstairs where you'd be better attended to, though I try

'Ah! That must have been a madhouse. I shan't trouble you to take me there yet. Get me my breakfast,

'I hope I haven't done anything wrong, sir, but you know I hope that as far as a man can I tries to do the

proper thing by all the gentlemen in chambersand more particular those whose lot is hardsuch as you,

for instance, Mr. Heldar. You likes softroe bloater, don't you? Softroe bloaters is scarcer than hardroe,

but what I says is, "Never mind a little extra trouble so long as you give satisfaction to the tenants."'

Mr. Beeton withdrew and left Dick to himself. Torpenhow had been long away; there was no more rioting in

the chambers, and Dick had settled down to his new life, which he was weak enough to consider nothing

It is hard to live alone in the dark, confusing the day and night; dropping to sleep through sheer weariness at

midday, and rising restless in the chill of the dawn. At first Dick, on his awakenings, would grope along the

corridors of the chambers till he heard some one snore. Then he would know that the day had not yet come,

Later he learned not to stir till there was a noise and movement in the house and Mr. Beeton advised him to

get up. Once dressedand dressing, now that Torpenhow was away, was a lengthy business, because collars,

ties, and the like hid themselves in far corners of the room, and search meant headbeating against chairs and

trunksonce dressed, there was nothing whatever to do except to sit still and brood till the three daily meals

came. Centuries separated breakfast from lunch and lunch from dinner, and though a man prayed for

hundreds of years that his mind might be taken from him, God would never hear. Rather the mind was

quickened and the revolving thoughts ground against each other as millstones grind when there is no corn

between; and yet the brain would not wear out and give him rest. It continued to think, at length, with

imagery and all manner of reminiscences. It recalled Maisie and past success, reckless travels by land and

sea, the glory of doing work and feeling that it was good, and suggested all that might have happened had the

eyes only been faithful to their duty. When thinking ceased through sheer weariness, there poured into Dick's

soul tide on tide of overwhelming, purposeless feardread of starvation always, terror lest the unseen ceiling

should crush down upon him, fear of fire in the chambers and a louse's death in red flame, and agonies of

fiercer horror that had nothing to do with any fear of death. Then Dick bowed his head, and clutching the

arms of his chair fought with his sweating self till the tinkle of plates told him that something to eat was

Mr. Beeton would bring the meal when he had time to spare, and Dick learned to hang upon his speech,

which dealt with badly fitted gasplugs, wastepipes out of repair, little tricks for driving picturenails into

walls, and the sins of the charwoman or the housemaids. In the lack of better things the small gossip of a

servant'' hall becomes immensely interesting, and the screwing of a washer on a tap an event to be talked over

Once or twice a week, too, Mr. Beeton would take Dick out with him when he went marketing in the morning

to haggle with tradesmen over fish, lampwicks, mustard, tapioca, and so forth, while Dick rested his weight

first on one foot and then on the other and played aimlessly with the tins and stringball on the counter. Then

they would perhaps meet one of Mr. Beeton's friends, and Dick, standing aside a little, would hold his peace

The life did not increase his selfrespect. He abandoned shaving as a dangerous exercise, and being shaved in

a barber's shop meant exposure of his infirmity. He could not see that his clothes were properly brushed, and

since he had never taken any care of his personal appearance he became every known variety of sloven. A

blind man cannot deal with cleanliness till he has been some months used to the darkness. If he demand

attendance and grow angry at the want of it, he must assert himself and stand upright. Then the meanest

menial can see that he is blind and, therefore, of no consequence. A wise man will keep his eyes on the floor

and sit still. For amusement he may pick coal lump by lump out of the scuttle with the tongs and pile it in a

little heap in the fender, keeping count of the lumps, which must all be put back again, one by one and very

carefully. He may set himself sums if he cares to work them out; he may talk to himself or to the cat if she

chooses to visit him; and if his trade has been that of an artist, he may sketch in the air with his forefinger; but

that is too much like drawing a pig with the eyes shut. He may go to his bookshelves and count his books,

ranging them in order of their size; or to his wardrobe and count his shirts, laying them in piles of two or

Even this entertainment wearies after a time; and all the times are very, very long.

Dick was allowed to sort a toolchest where Mr. Beeton kept hammers, taps and nuts, lengths of gaspipes,

'If I don't have everything just where I know where to look for it, why, then, I can't find anything when I do

want it. You've no idea, sir, the amount of little things that these chambers uses up,' said Mr. Beeton.

Fumbling at the handle of the door as he went out: 'It's hard on you, sir, I do think it's hard on you. Ain't you

'I wasn't doubting for a moment that you couldn't pay your way, sir; but I 'ave often said to my wife, "It's 'ard

on 'im because it isn't as if he was an old man, nor yet a middleaged one, but quite a young gentleman.

'I suppose so,' said Dick, absently. This particular nerve through long battering had ceased to feelmuch.

'I was thinking,' continued Mr. Beeton, still making as if to go, 'that you might like to hear my boy Alf read

you the papers sometimes of an evening. He do read beautiful, seeing he's only nine.'

'We wasn't thinking of that, sir, but of course it's in your own 'ands; but only to 'ear Alf sing "A Boy's best

Alf was not a nice child, being puffed up with many schoolboard certificates for good conduct, and

Beeton remained, beaming, while the child wailed his way through a song of some eight eightline verses in

the usual whine of a young Cockney, and, after compliments, left him to read Dick the foreign telegrams. Ten

'No. 'E said I read beautiful. Said 'e never 'eard any one read like that, but 'e said 'e couldn't abide the stuff in

'P'raps he's lost some money in the Stocks. Were you readin' him about Stocks, Alf?'

'No; it was all about fightin' out there where the soldiers is gonea great long piece with all the lines close

together and very hard words in it. 'E give me 'arf a crown because I read so well. And 'e says the next time

'That's good hearing, but I do think for all the halfcrownput it into the kickingdonkey moneybox, Alf,

and let me see you do ithe might have kept you longer. Why, he couldn't have begun to understand how

'He's best left to hisselfgentlemen always are when they're downhearted,' said Mr. Beeton.

Alf's rigorously limited powers of comprehending Torpenhow's special correspondence had waked the devil

of unrest in Dick. He could hear, through the boy's nasal chant, the camels grunting in the squares behind the

soldiers outside Suakin; could hear the men swearing and chaffing across the cooking pots, and could smell

That night he prayed to God that his mind might be taken from him, offering for proof that he was worthy of

this favour the fact that he had not shot himself long ago. That prayer was not answered, and indeed Dick

knew in his heart of hearts that only a lingering sense of humour and no special virtue had kept him alive.

Suicide, he had persuaded himself, would be a ludicrous insult to the gravity of the situation as well as a

'Just for the fun of the thing,' he said to the cat, who had taken Binkie's place in his establishment, 'I should

like to know how long this is going to last. I can live for a year on the hundred pounds Torp cashed for me. I

must have two or three thousand at least in the Banktwenty or thirty years more provided for, that is to say.

Then I fall back on my hundred and twenty a year, which will be more by that time. Let's consider.

Twentyfivethirtyfivea man's in his prime then, they sayfortyfivea middleaged man just

entering politicsfiftyfive"died at the comparatively early age of fiftyfive," according to the

newspapers. Bah! How these Christians funk death! Sixtyfivewe're only getting on in years. Seventyfive

is just possible, though. Great hell, cat O! fifty years more of solitary confinement in the dark! You'll die, and

Beeton will die, and Torp will die, and Maieverybody else will die, but I shall be alive and kicking with

nothing to do. I'm very sorry for myself. I should like some one else to be sorry for me. Evidently I'm not

going ma before I die, but the pain's just as bad as ever. Some day when you're vivisected, cat O! they'll tie

you down on a little table and cut you openbut don't be afraid; they'll take precious good care that you

don't die. You'll live, and you'll be very sorry then that you weren't sorry for me. Perhaps Torp will come

back or . . . I wish I could go to Torp and the Nilghai, even though I were in their way.'

Pussy left the room before the speech was ended, and Alf, as he entered, found Dick addressing the empty

The outstretched hand shook just a little and the voice was not oversteady. It was within the limits of human

possibility thatthat was no letter from Maisie. He knew the heft of three closed envelopes only too well. It

was a foolish hope that the girl should write to him, for he did not realise that there is a wrong which admits

of no reparation though the evildoer may with tears and the heart's best love strive to mend all. It is best to

forget that wrong whether it be caused or endured, since it is as remediless as bad work once put forward.

'Read it, then,' said Dick, and Alf began intoning according to the rules of the Board School '"I could have

given you love, I could have given you loyalty, such as you never dreamed of. Do you suppose I cared what

you were? But you chose to whistle everything down the wind for nothing. My only excuse for you is that

you are so young." 'That's all,' he said, returning the paper to be dropped into the fire.

'I don't know. I think it was a circular or a tract about not whistlin' at everything when you're young.'

'I must have stepped on something when I was alive and walking about and it has bounced up and hit me.

God help it, whatever it isunless it was all a joke. But I don't know any one who'd take the trouble to play a

Dick considered for a long time but could not remember when or how he had put himself in the way of

Still, the letter as touching on matters that he preferred not to think about stung him into a fit of frenzy that

lasted for a day and night. When his heart was so full of despair that it would hold no more, body and soul

Then came fear of darkness and desperate attempts to reach the light again. But there was no light to be

reached. When that agony had left him sweating and breathless, the downward flight would recommence till

the gathering torture of it spurred him into another fight as hopeless as the first. Followed some few minutes

of sleep in which he dreamed that he saw. Then the procession of events would repeat itself till he was utterly

worn out and the brain took up its everlasting consideration of Maisie and mighthavebeens.

At the end of everything Mr. Beeton came to his room and volunteered to take him out. 'Not marketing this

'Be damned if I do,' quoth Dick. 'Keep to the streets and walk up and down. I like to hear the people round

This was not altogether true. The blind in the first stages of their infirmity dislike those who can move with a

free stride and unlifted armsbut Dick had no earthly desire to go to the Parks. Once and only once since

Maisie had shut her door he had gone there under Alf's charge. Alf forgot him and fished for minnows in the

Serpentine with some companions. After half an hour's waiting Dick, almost weeping with rage and wrath,

caught a passerby, who introduced him to a friendly policeman, who led him to a fourwheeler opposite the

Albert Hall. He never told Mr. Beeton of Alf's forgetfulness, but . . . this was not the manner in which he was

'What streets would you like to walk down, then?' said Mr. Beeton, sympathetically. His own ideas of a

riotous holiday meant picnicking on the grass of Green Park with his family, and half a dozen paper bags full

'Keep to the river,' said Dick, and they kept to the river, and the rush of it was in his ears till they came to

Blackfriars Bridge and struck thence on to the Waterloo Road, Mr. Beeton explaining the beauties of the

'And walking on the other side of the pavement,' said he, 'unless I'm much mistaken, is the young woman that

used to come to your rooms to be drawed. I never forgets a face and I never remembers a name, except

'Stop her,' said Dick. 'It's Bessie Broke. Tell her I'd like to speak to her again. Quick, man!'

Mr. Beeton crossed the road under the noses of the omnibuses and arrested Bessie then on her way

northward. She recognised him as the man in authority who used to glare at her when she passed up Dick's

'Wasn't you Mr. Heldar's model?' said Mr. Beeton, planting himself in front of her. 'You was. He's on the

'Why?' said Bessie, faintly. She rememberedindeed had never for long forgottenan affair connected with

Dick was leaning against the parapet of the bridge as Mr. Beeton pointed him outa stubbearded, bowed

creature wearing a dirty magentacoloured neckcloth outside an unbrushed coat. There was nothing to fear

from such an one. Even if he chased her, Bessie thought, he could not follow far. She crossed over, and

Dick's face lighted up. It was long since a woman of any kind had taken the trouble to speak to him.

'I hope you're well, Mr. Heldar?' said Bessie, a little puzzled. Mr. Beeton stood by with the air of an

'I'm very well indeed, and, by Jove! I'm glad to seehear you, I mean, Bess. You never thought it worth

while to turn up and see us again after you got your money. I don't know why you should. Are you going

'Lor, no! I paid my premium'Bessie was very proud of that word'for a barmaid, sleeping in, and I'm at

Mr. Beeton had no special reason to believe in the loftiness of human nature. Therefore he dissolved himself

like a mist and returned to his gasplugs without a word of apology. Bessie watched the flight with a certain

uneasiness; but so long as Dick appeared to be ignorant of the harm that had been done to him . . .

'It's hard work pulling the beerhandles,' she went on, 'and they've got one of them pennyintheslot

cashmachines, so if you get wrong by a penny at the end of the daybut then I don't believe the machinery

'I'm afraid I must ask you to help me home, then. I'll make it worth your while. You see.' The sightless eyes

'It isn't taking you out of your way?' he said hesitatingly. 'I can ask a policeman if it is.'

He turned and cannoned into a man on the sidewalk, recoiling with an oath. Bessie took his arm and said

nothingas she had said nothing when he had ordered her to turn her face a little more to the light. They

walked for some time in silence, the girl steering him deftly through the crowd.

'Then west, then south, and then east again, all along the underside of Europe. Then south again, God knows

how far.' The explanation did not enlighten Bessie in the least, but she held her tongue and looked to Dick's

'We'll have tea and muffins,' he said joyously. 'I can't tell you, Bessie, how glad I am to find you again. What

'I didn't, as a matter of factbut afterwards At any rate I'm glad you've come. You know the stairs.'

So Bessie led him home to his own placethere was no one to hinderand shut the door of the studio.

'What a mess!' was her first word. 'All these things haven't been looked after for months and months.'

'I don't know what you expect them to do. They ought to know what you've paid them for. The dust's just

'All over the pictures and the floor, and all over your coat. I'd like to speak to them housemaids.'

Bessie saw the action and, as far as in her lay, was touched. But there remained always a keen sense of

'How long have you been like this?' she said wrathfully, as though the blindness were some fault of the

'The day after you went away with the check, almost as soon as my picture was finished; I hardly saw her

'Then they've been cheating you ever since, that's all. I know their nice little ways.'

A woman may love one man and despise another, but on general feminine principles she will do her best to

save the man she despises from being defrauded. Her loved one can look to himself, but the other man, being

'I don't think Mr. Beeton cheats much,' said Dick. Bessie was flouncing up and down the room, and he was

conscious of a keen sense of enjoyment as he heard the swish of her skirts and the light step between.

'Tea and muffins,' she said shortly, when the ring at the bell was answered; 'two teaspoonfuls and one over for

the pot. I don't want the old teapot that was here when I used to come. It don't draw. Get another.'

The housemaid went away scandalised, and Dick chuckled. Then he began to cough as Bessie banged up and

'Put things straight. This is like unfurnished lodgings. How could you let it go so?'

Beeton. Her husband on his return had explained the situation, winding up with the peculiarly felicitous

proverb, 'Do unto others as you would be done by.' She had descended to put into her place the person who

'Muffins ready yet?' said Bess, still dusting. She was no longer a drab of the streets but a young lady who,

thanks to Dick's check, had paid her premium and was entitled to pull beerhandles with the best. Being

neatly dressed in black she did not hesitate to face Mrs. Beeton, and there passed between the two women

certain regards that Dick would have appreciated. The situation adjusted itself by eye. Bessie had won, and

Mrs. Beeton returned to cook muffins and make scathing remarks about models, hussies, trollops, and the

'There's nothing to be got of interfering with him, Liza,' he said. 'Alf, you go along into the street to play.

When he isn't crossed he's as kindly as kind, but when he's crossed he's the devil and all. We took too many

little things out of his rooms since he was blind to be that particular about what he does. They ain't no objects

to a blind man, of course, but if it was to come into court we'd get the sack. Yes, I did introduce him to that

'Much too feelin'!' Mrs. Beeton slapped the muffins into the dish, and thought of comely housemaids long

'I ain't ashamed of it, and it isn't for us to judge him hard so long as he pays quiet and regular as he do. I know

how to manage young gentlemen, you know how to cook for them, and what I says is, let each stick to his

own business and then there won't be any trouble. Take them muffins down, Liza, and be sure you have no

words with that young woman. His lot is cruel hard, and if he's crossed he do swear worse than any one I've

'That's a little better,' said Bessie, sitting down to the tea. 'You needn't wait, thank you, Mrs. Beeton.'

Bessie made no answer whatever. This, she knew, was the way in which real ladies routed their foes, and

when one is a barmaid at a firstclass publichouse one may become a real lady at ten minutes' notice.

Her eyes fell on Dick opposite her and she was both shocked and displeased. There were droppings of food

all down the front of his coat; the mouth under the ragged illgrown beard drooped sullenly; the forehead was

lined and contracted; and on the lean temples the hair was a dusty indeterminate colour that might or might

not have been called gray. The utter misery and selfabandonment of the man appealed to her, and at the

bottom of her heart lay the wicked feeling that he was humbled and brought low who had once humbled her.

You don't seem to live too well. What made you go blind that sudden? Why isn't there any one to look after

'I was cut across the head a long time ago, and that ruined my eyes. I don't suppose anybody thinks it worth

'Good gracious, child, do you imagine that I think of what becomes of me these days?'

'You ought. Get that taken off before I come here again. I suppose I can come, can't I?'

'I'd be only too grateful if you did. I don't think I treated you very well in the old days. I used to make you

'I'm sorry for it, then. Come and see me when you can and as often as you can. God knows, there isn't a soul

'They've let you do anyhow and they haven't done anything for you. I've only to look and see that much. I'll

come, and I'll be glad to come, but you must go and be shaved, and you must get some other clothesthose

'I know you have. Tell Mr. Beeton to give you a new suit and I'll brush it and keep it clean. You may be as

blind as a barndoor, Mr. Heldar, but it doesn't excuse you looking like a sweep.'

'Oh, I'm sorry for you. I'm that sorry for you!' she cried impulsively, and took Dick's hands. Mechanically, he

lowered his head as if to kissshe was the only woman who had taken pity on him, and he was not too

'Nothing o' that kind till you look more like a gentleman. It's quite easy when you get shaved, and some

He could hear her drawing on her gloves and rose to say goodbye. She passed behind him, kissed him

audaciously on the back of the neck, and ran away as swiftly as on the day when she had destroyed the

'To think of me kissing Mr. Heldar,' she said to herself, 'after all he's done to me and all! Well, I'm sorry for

him, and if he was shaved he wouldn't be so bad to look at, but . . . Oh them Beetons, how shameful they've

treated him! I know Beeton's wearing his shirt on his back today just as well as if I'd aired it. Tomorrow,

I'll see . . . I wonder if he has much of his own. It might be worth more than the barI wouldn't have to do

Dick was not grateful to Bessie for her parting gift. He was acutely conscious of it in the nape of his neck

throughout the night, but it seemed, among very many other things, to enforce the wisdom of getting shaved.

He was shaved accordingly in the morning, and felt the better for it. A fresh suit of clothes, white linen, and

the knowledge that some one in the world said that she took an interest in his personal appearance made him

carry himself almost upright; for the brain was relieved for a while from thinking of Maisie, who, under other

'Let us consider,' said he, after lunch. 'The girl can't care, and it's a tossup whether she comes again or not,

but if money can buy her to look after me she shall be bought. Nobody else in the world would take the

trouble, and I can make it worth her while. She's a child of the gutter holding brevet rank as a barmaid; so she

shall have everything she wants if she'll only come and talk and look after me.' He rubbed his newly shorn

chin and began to perplex himself with the thought of her not coming. 'I suppose I did look rather a sweep,'

he went on. 'I had no reason to look otherwise. I knew things dropped on my clothes, but it didn't matter. It

would be cruel if she didn't come. She must. Maisie came once, and that was enough for her. She was quite

right. She had something to work for. This creature has only beerhandles to pull, unless she has deluded

Something cried aloud within him:This will hurt more than anything that has gone before. It will recall and

'I know it, I know it!' Dick cried, clenching his hands despairingly; 'but, good heavens! is a poor blind beggar

never to get anything out of his life except three meals a day and a greasy waistcoat? I wish she'd come.'

Early in the afternoon time she came, because there was no young man in her life just then, and she thought

of material advantages which would allow her to be idle for the rest of her days.

'I shouldn't have known you,' she said approvingly. 'You look as you used to looka gentleman that was

'Maybebut you won't get it yet. Sit down and let's see what I can do for you. I'm certain sure Mr. Beeton

cheats you, now that you can't go through the housekeeping books every month. Isn't that true?'

'I'd try to look after you, anyhow; but I shouldn't care to have to work for both of us.' This was tentative.

'Do you remember where I used to keep my bankbook?' said he. 'Torp took it to be balanced just before he

'Oh! Four thousand two hundred and ten pounds nine shillings and a penny! Oh my!'

'You can have the penny. That's not bad for one year's work. Is that and a hundred and twenty pounds a year

The idleness and the pretty clothes were almost within her reach now, but she must, by being housewifely,

'Yes; but you'd have to move, and if we took an inventory, I think we'd find that Mr. Beeton has been

prigging little things out of the rooms here and there. They don't look as full as they used.'

'Never mind, we'll let him have them. The only thing I'm particularly anxious to take away is that picture I

used you forwhen you used to swear at me. We'll pull out of this place, Bess, and get away as far as ever

'I don't know where I can go to get away from myself, but I'll try, and you shall have all the pretty frocks that

Give me that kiss now, Bess. Ye gods! it's good to put one's arm round a woman's waist again.'

Then came the fulfilment of the prophecy within the brain. If his arm were thus round Maisie's waist and a

kiss had just been given and taken between them,why then . . . He pressed the girl more closely to himself

because the pain whipped him. She was wondering how to explain a little accident to the Melancolia. At any

rate, if this man really desired the solace of her companyand certainly he would relapse into his original

It would be delightful at least to see what would happen, and by her teachings it was good for a man to stand

'I shouldn't worrit about that picture if I was you,' she began, in the hope of turning his attention.

'It's at the back of all my canvases somewhere. Find it, Bess; you know it as well as I do.'

Women haggle much better than men. It might be a matter of eight or nine hundred pounds toto us. I

simply didn't like to think about it for a long time. It was mixed up with my life so.But we'll cover up our

tracks and get rid of everything, eh? Make a fresh start from the beginning, Bess.'

Then she began to repent very much indeed, because she knew the value of money. Still, it was probable that

the blind man was overestimating the value of his work. Gentlemen, she knew, were absurdly particular about

their things. She giggled as a nervous housemaid giggles when she tries to explain the breakage of a pipe.

'I'm very sorry, but you remember I wasI was angry with you before Mr. Torpenhow went away?'

'Tell me what? Good gracious, what are you making such a fuss about when you might just as well be giving

He was beginning to learn, not for the first time in his experience, that kissing is a cumulative poison. The

Bessie gave the kiss promptly, whispering, as she did so, 'I was so angry I rubbed out that picture with the

'I rubbed it out with turps and the knife,' faltered Bessie. 'I thought you'd only have to do it over again. You

'N'nothing that looks like anything. I'm sorryI didn't know you'd take on about it; I only meant to do it in

Then he shook his head as a young steer shakes it when the lash of the stockwhip cross his nose warns him

back to the path on to the shambles that he would escape. For weeks he had forced himself not to think of the

Melancolia, because she was a part of his dead life. With Bessie's return and certain new prospects that had

developed themselves, the Melancolialovelier in his imagination than she had ever been on

canvasreappeared. By her aid he might have procured mor money wherewith to amuse Bess and to forget

Maisie, as well as another taste of an almost forgotten success. Now, thanks to a vicious little housemaid's

folly, there was nothing to look fornot even the hope that he might some day take an abiding interest in the

housemaid. Worst of all, he had been made to appear ridiculous in Maisie's eyes. A woman will forgive the

man who has ruined her life's work so long as he gives her love; a man may forgive those who ruin the love

'Tcktcktck,' said Dick between his teeth, and then laughed softly. 'It's an omen, Bessie, anda good

many things considered, it serves me right for doing what I have done. By Jove! that accounts for Maisie's

running away. She must have thought me perfectly madsmall blame to her! The whole picture ruined, isn't

'Something you wouldn't understand, dear. Great heavens! to think that a little piece of dirt like you could

throw me out of stride!' Dick was talking to himself as Bessie tried to shake off his grip on her wrist.

'I ain't a piece of dirt, and you shouldn't call me so! I did it 'cause I hated you, and I'm only sorry now 'cause

Bessie began to sob. She did not like being shackled against her will; she was afraid of the blind face and the

look upon it, and was sorry too that her great revenge had only made Dick laugh.

'Don't cry,' he said, and took her into his arms. 'You only did what you thought right.'

'II ain't a little piece of dirt, and if you say that I'll never come to you again.'

Bessie remained in his arms shrinking. Dick's first thought was connected with Maisie, and it hurt him as

The first pangthe first sense of things lost is but the prelude to the play, for the very just Providence who

delights in causing pain has decreed that the agony shall return, and that in the midst of keenest pleasure.

They know this pain equally who have forsaken or been forsaken by the love of their life, and in their new

It is better to remain alone and suffer only the misery of being alone, so long as it is possible to find

distraction in daily work. When that resource goes the man is to be pitied and left alone.

These things and some others Dick considered while he was holding Bessie to his heart.

'Though you mayn't know it,' he said, raising his head, 'the Lord is a just and a terrible God, Bess; with a very

strong sense of humour. It serves me righthow it serves me right! Torp could understand it if he were here;

he must have suffered something at your hands, child, but only for a minute or so. I saved him. Set that to my

'Indeed, I'm not. I'm making fun of myself. . . . Thus. "He saved others, himself he cannot save." It isn't

exactly a schoolboard text.' He released her wrist, but since he was between her and the door, she could not

'I'm not. I'm grateful to you for spoiling it. . . . What were we talking about before you mentioned the thing?'

'I'm afraid not, dear. Think of fifty pounds for pretty things all to yourself.'

Bessie cursed under her breath. She had pitied the man sincerely, had kissed him with almost equal sincerity,

for he was not unhandsome; it pleased her to be in a way and for a time his protector, and above all there

were four thousand pounds to be handled by some one. Now through a slip of the tongue and a little feminine

desire to give a little, not too much, pain she had lost the money, the blessed idleness and the pretty things,

the companionship, and the chance of looking outwardly as respectable as a real lady.

'Now fill me a pipe. Tobacco doesn't taste, but it doesn't matter, and I'll think things out. What's the day of the

Twentytwo pounds covers my passage home again. Allow ten for additional expenses. We must put up at

Madam Binat's for old time's sake. Thirtytwo pounds altogether. Add a hundred for the cost of the last

tripGad, won't Torp stare to see me!a hundred and thirtytwo leaves seventyeight for baksheeshI

What are you crying for, Bess? It wasn't your fault, child; it was mine altogether. Oh, you funny little

I want the passbook and the checkbook. Stop a minute. Four thousand pounds at four per centthat's safe

interestmeans a hundred and sixty pounds a year; one hundred and twenty pounds a hearalso safeis

two eighty, and two hundred and eighty pounds added to three hundred a year means gilded luxury for a

Richer by two hundred and ten pounds stored in his moneybelt, Dick caused Bessie, now thoroughly

bewildered, to hurry from the bank to the P. and O. offices, where he explained things tersely.

'She's a wet little hooker. Is it Tilbury and a tender, or Galleons and the docks?'

'If they all took their passages like that instead of talking about their trunks, life would be worth something,'

said the clerk to his neighbour, who was trying to explain to a harassed mother of many that condensed milk

is just as good for babes at sea as daily dairy. Being nineteen and unmarried, he spoke with conviction.

'We are now,' quoth Dick, as they returned to the studio, patting the place where his moneybelt covered

ticket and money, 'beyond the reach of man, or devil, or womanwhich is much more important. I've had

three little affairs to carry through before Thursday, but I needn't ask you to help, Bess. Come here on

Thursday morning at nine. We'll breakfast, and you shall take me down to Galleons Station.'

'I can do anything. I didn't realise it before, but I can. I've done a great deal already. Resolution shall be

treated to one kiss if Bessie doesn't object.' Strangely enough, Bessie objected and Dick laughed. 'I suppose

you're right. Well, come at nine the day after tomorrow and you'll get your money.'

Oh, but it's long and long to wait! Goodbye, Bessie,send Beeton here as you go out.'

''Tisn't for me to say, sir. Some things is very pretty and some is wore out dreadful.'

'Oh, damn your longwindedness! You've made your pickings out of me and the other tenants. Why, you

talked of retiring and buying a publichouse the other day. Give a straight answer to a straight question.'

He felt his way to a bookstand that supported a pile of sketchbooks, and wrenched out one of the mahogany

'One hundred it is. It'll cost me three and six to get that there pilaster mended.'

'I thought so. What an out and out swindler you must have been to spring that price at once!'

'I hope I've done nothing to dissatisfy any of the tenants, least of all you, sir.'

'Never mind that. Get me the money tomorrow, and see that all my clothes are packed in the little brown

Mr. Beeton discussed this new departure with his wife, who decided that Bessie was at the bottom of it all.

'We'll never come back any more, boys, We'll never come back no more; We'll go to the deuce on any

Oh say we're afloat or ashore, boys, Oh say we're afloat or ashore; But we'll never come back any more, boys,

Mr. Beeton addressed Dick soothingly, but it was some time before the latter, threshing up and down his

bedroom, could realise the intention of the promises to 'find everything tomorrow, sir.'

'Oh, you coppernosed old foolyou impotent Academician!' he shouted at last. 'Do you suppose I want to

shoot myself? Take the pistol in your silly shaking hand then. If you touch it, it will go off, because it's

Long ago Dick had carefully possessed himself of a fortypound weight fieldequipment constructed by the

knowledge of his own experience. It was this putaway treasure that he was trying to find and rehandle. Mr.

Beeton whipped the revolver out of its place on the top of the package, and Dick drove his hand among the

khaki coat and breeches, the blue cloth legbands, and the heavy flannel shirts doubled over a pair of

swanneck spurs. Under these and the waterbottle lay a sketchbook and a pigskin case of stationery.

'These we don't want; you can have them, Mr. Beeton. Everything else I'll keep. Pack 'em on the top

righthand side of my trunk. When you've done that come into the studio with your wife. I want you both.

It is not an easy thing to write when you cannot see, and Dick had particular reasons for wishing that his work

should be clear. So he began, following his right hand with his left: '"The badness of this writing is because I

am blind and cannot see my pen." H'mph!even a lawyer can't mistake that. It must be signed, I suppose,

but it needn't be witnessed. Now an inch lowerwhy did I never learn to use a typewriter?"This is the

I am in sound bodily and mental health, and there is no previous will to revoke."That's all right. Damn the

pen! Whereabouts on the paper was I?"I leave everything that I possess in the world, including four

thousand pounds, and two thousand seven hundred and twenty eight pounds held for me"oh, I can't get this

straight.' He tore off half the sheet and began again with the caution about the handwriting. Then: 'I leave all

the money I possess in the world to'here followed Maisie's name, and the names of the two banks that held

'It mayn't be quite regular, but no one has a shadow of a right to dispute it, and I've given Maisie's address.

Come in, Mr. Beeton. This is my signature; I want you and your wife to witness it. Thanks. Tomorrow you

must take me to the landlord and I'll pay forfeit for leaving without notice, and I'll lodge this paper with him

in case anything happens while I'm away. Now we're going to light up the studio stove. Stay with me, and

No one knows until he has tried how fine a blaze a year's accumulation of bills, letters, and dockets can make.

Dick stuffed into the stove every document in the studiosaving only three unopened letters; destroyed

'What a lot of rubbish a tenant gets about him if he stays long enough in one place, to be sure,' said Mr.

'Yes, sir,' politely. Mr. Beeton was quite sure that Dick had gone mad, otherwise he would have never parted

with his excellent furniture for a song. The canvas things took up storage room and were much better out of

There remained only to leave the little will in safe hands: that could not be accomplished to tomorrow. Dick

groped about the floor picking up the last pieces of paper, assured himself again and again that there

remained no written word or sign of his past life in drawer or desk, and sat down before the stove till the fire

'GOODBYE, Bess; I promised you fifty. Here's a hundredall that I got for my furniture from Beeton.

That will keep you in pretty frocks for some time. You've been a good little girl, all things considered, but

'Of course I will, dear. Now take me up the gangplank and into the cabin. Once aboard the lugger and the

'The headsteward, if there's any use in money. The doctor when we come to Port Said, if I know anything of

Bess found Dick his cabin in the wild turmoil of a ship full of leavetakers and weeping relatives. Then he

kissed her, and laid himself down in his bunk until the decks should be clear. He who had taken so long to

move about his own darkened rooms well understood the geography of a ship, and the necessity of seeing to

Before the screw began to thrash the ship along the Docks he had been introduced to the headsteward, had

royally tipped him, secured a good place at table, opened out his baggage, and settled himself down with joy

in the cabin. It was scarcely necessary to feel his way as he moved about, for he knew everything so well.

Then God was very kind: a deep sleep of weariness came upon him just as he would have thought of Maisie,

and he slept till the steamer had cleared the mouth of the Thames and was lifting to the pulse of the Channel.

The rattle of the engines, the reek of oil and paint, and a very familiar sound in the next cabin roused him to

'Oh, it's good to be alive again!' He yawned, stretched himself vigorously, and went on deck to be told that

they were almost abreast of the lights of Brighton. This is no more open water than Trafalgal Square is a

common; the free levels begin at Ushant; but none the less Dick could feel the healing of the sea at work

upon him already. A boisterous little crossswell swung the steamer disrespectfully by the nose; and one

wave breaking far aft spattered the quarterdeck and the pile of new deckchairs. He heard the foam fall with

the clash of broken glass, was stung in the face by a cupful, and sniffing luxuriously, felt his way to the

smokingroom by the wheel. There a strong b reeze found him, blew his cap off and left him bareheaded in

the doorway, and the smokingroom steward, understanding that he was a voyager of experience, said that

the weather would be stiff in the chops off the Channel and more than half a gale in the Bay. These things fell

as they were foretold, and Dick enjoyed himself to the utmost. It is allowable and even necessary at sea to lay

firm hold upon tables, stanchions, and ropes in moving from place to place. On land the man who feels with

his hands is patently blind. At sea even a blind man who is not seasick can jest with the doctor over the

weakness of his fellows. Dick told the doctor many talesand these are coin of more value than silver if

properly handledsmoked with him till unholy hours of the night, and so won his shortlived regard that he

And the sea roared or was still as the winds blew, and the engines sang their song day and night, and the sun

grew stronger day by day, and Tom the Lascar barber shaved Dick of a morning under the opened

hatchgrating where the cool winds blew, and the awnings were spread and the passengers made merry, and

'Take me,' said Dick, to the doctor, 'to Madame Binat'sif you know where that is.'

'Whew!' said the doctor, 'I do. There's not much to choose between 'em; but I suppose you're aware that that's

one of the worst houses in the place. They'll rob you to begin with, and knife you later.'

So he was brought to Madame Binat's and filled his nostrils with the wellremembered smell of the East, that

runs without a change from the Canal head to HongKong, and his mouth with the villainous Lingua Franca

of the Levant. The heat smote him between the shoulderblades with the buffet of an old friend, his feet

slipped on the sand, and his coatsleeve was warm as newbaked bread when he lifted it to his nose.

Madame Binat smiled with the smile that knows no astonishment when Dick entered the drinkingshop

which was one source of her gains. But for a little accident of complete darkness he could hardly realise that

he had ever quitted the old life that hummed in his ears. Somebody opened a bottle of peculiarly strong

Schiedam. The smell reminded Dick of Monsieur Binat, who, by the way, had spoken of art and degradation.

Binat was dead; Madame said as much when the doctor departed, scandalised, so far as a ship's doctor can be,

at the warmth of Dick's reception. Dick was delighted at it. 'They remember me here after a year. They have

forgotten me across the water by this time. Madame, I want a long talk with you when you're at liberty. It is

In the evening she set an irontopped caf�table out on the sands, and Dick and she sat by it, while the house

behind them filled with riot, merriment, oaths, and threats. The stars came out and the lights of the shipping

'Yes. The war is good for trade, my friend; but what dost thou do here? We have not forgotten thee.'

'But there was the glory first. We heard of it here, even hereI and Binat; and thou hast used the head of

Yellow 'Tinashe is still aliveso often and so well that 'Tina laughed when the papers arrived by the

mailboats. It was always something that we here could recognise in the paintings. And then there was

'Not to me. Thou hast paid for everything.' Under her breath, 'Mon Dieu, to be blind and so young! What

Dick could not see her face with the pity on it, or his own with the discoloured hair at the temples. He did not

feel the need of pity; he was too anxious to get to the front once more, and explained his desire.

'And where? The Canal is full of the English ships. Sometimes they fire as they used to do when the war was

hereten years ago. Beyond Cairo there is fighting, but how canst thou go there without a correspondent's

passport? And in the desert there is always fighting, but that is impossible also,' said she.

'I must go to Suakin.' He knew, thanks to Alf's readings, that Torpenhow was at work with the column that

was protecting the construction of the SuakinBerber line. P. and O. steamers do not touch at that port, and,

besides, Madame Binat knew everybody whose help or advice was worth anything. They were not

respectable folk, but they could cause things to be accomplished, which is much more important when there

'But at Suakin they are always fighting. That desert breeds men alwaysand always more men. And they are

Madame Binat dropped a fat arm on the tabletop, filled Dick's glass anew, and looked at him closely under

the stars. There was no need that he should bow his head in assent and say 'No. He is a man, butif it

'I blame?' she laughed shrilly. 'Who am I that I should blame any oneexcept those who try to cheat me over

'I must go to Suakin. Think for me. A great deal has changed within the year, and the men I knew are not

here. The Egyptian lighthouse steamer goes down the Canal to Suakinand the postboats But even

'Do not think any longer. I know, and it is for me to think. Thou shalt gothou shalt go and see thy friend.

Be wise. Sit here until the house is a little quietI must attend to my guestsand afterwards go to bed.

He sat at the table listening to the voices in the harbour and the streets, and wondering how soon the end

would come, till Madame Binat carried him off to bed and ordered him to sleep. The house shouted and sang

and danced and revelled, Madame Binat moving through it with one eye on the liquor payments and the girls

and the other on Dick's interests. To this latter end she smiled upon scowling and furtive Turkish officers of

fellaheen regiments, and more than kind to camel agents of no nationality whatever.

In the early morning, being then appropriately dressed in a flaming red silk balldress, with a front of

tarnished gold embroidery and a necklace of plateglass diamonds, she made chocolate and carried it in to

'It is only I, and I am of discreet age, eh? Drink and eat the roll too. Thus in France mothers bring their sons,

when those behave wisely, the morning chocolate.' She sat down on the side of the bed whispering: 'It is

all arranged. Thou wilt go by the lighthouse boat. That is a bribe of ten pounds English. The captain is never

paid by the Government. The boat comes to Suakin in four days. There will go with thee George, a Greek

muleteer. Another bribe of ten pounds. I will pay; they must not know of thy money. George will go with

thee as far as he goes with his mules. Then he comes back to me, for his wellbeloved is here, and if I do not

receive a telegram from Suakin saying that thou art well, the girl answers for George.'

'Thank you.' He reached out sleepily for the cup. 'You are much too kind, Madame.'

'If there were anything that I might do I would say, stay here and be wise; but I do not think that would be

best for thee.' She looked at her liquorstained dress with a sad smile. 'Nay, thou shalt go, in truth, thou shalt

She stooped and kissed Dick between the eyes. 'That is for goodmorning,' she said, going away. 'When thou

art dressed we will speak to George and make everything ready. But first we must open the little trunk. Give

'The amount of kissing lately has been simply scandalous. I shall expect Torp to kiss me next. He is more

likely to swear at me for getting in his way, though. Well, it won't last long.Ohe, Madame, help me to my

toilette of the guillotine! There will be no chance of dressing properly out yonder.'

He was rummaging among his new campaignkit, and rowelling his hands with the spurs. There are two says

of wearing welloiled anklejacks, spotless blue bands, khaki coat and breeches, and a perfectly pipeclayed

helmet. The right way is the way of the untired man, master of himself, setting out upon an expedition, well

'Everything must be very correct,' Dick explained. 'It will become dirty afterwards, but now it is good to feel

He patted the revolver neatly hidden under the fulness of the blouse on the right hip and fingered his collar.

'I can do no more,' Madame said, between laughing and crying. 'Look at thyselfbut I forgot.'

'But thou canst not be seen by the harbour walking with me in the daylight. Figure to yourself if some English

In spite of this burning impatience it was nearly evening ere the lighthouse boat began to move. Madame had

said a great deal both to George and the captain touching the arrangements that were to be made for Dick's

benefit. Very few men who had the honour of her acquaintance cared to disregard Madame's advice. That sort

of contempt might end in being knifed by a stranger in a gambling hell upon surprisingly short provocation.

For six daystwo of them were wasted in the crowded Canalthe little steamer worked her way to Suakin,

where she was to pick up the superintendent of the lighthouse; and Dick made it his business to propitiate

George, who was distracted with fears for the safety of his lightoflove and half inclined to make Dick

responsible for his own discomfort. When they arrived George took him under his wing, and together they

entered the redhot seaport, encumbered with the material and wastage of the SuakinBerger line, from

'If you keep with me,' said George, 'nobody will ask for passports or what you do. They are all very busy.'

'Yes; but I should like to hear some of the Englishmen talk. They might remember me. I was known here a

Now listen. This new railway runs out so far as TanaielHassanthat is seven miles. Then there is a camp.

They say that beyond TanaielHassan the English troops go forward, and everything that they require will

'Ah! Base camp. I see. That's a better business than fighting Fuzzies in the open.'

'And I go up with my mules tonight. Only those who particularly require to go to the camp go out with the

'The dearsthey always used to!' Dick snuffed the smell of parched dust, heated iron, and flaking paint with

'When I have got my mules together I go up tonight, but you must first send a telegram of Port Said,

'Madame has you well in hand. Would you stick a knife into me if you had the chance?'

'I see. It's a bad thing to be divided between love of woman and the chance of loot. I sympathise with you,

They went to the telegraphoffice unquestioned, for all the world was desperately busy and had scarcely time

to turn its head, and Suakin was the last place under sky that would be chosen for holidayground. On their

return the voice of an English subaltern asked Dick what he was doing. The blue goggles were over his eyes

and he walked with his hand on George's elbow as he replied 'Egyptian Governmentmules. My orders

'Oh, certainly not. I beg your pardon. I'd no right to ask, but not seeing your face before I'

'I go out in the train tonight, I suppose,' said Dick, boldly. 'There will be no difficulty in loading up the

'You can see the horseplatforms from here. You must have them loaded up early.' The young man went

away wondering what sort of brokendown waif this might be who talked like a gentleman and consorted

with Greek muleteers. Dick felt unhappy. To outface an English officer is no small thing, but the bluff loses

relish when one plays it from the utter dark, and stumbles up and down rough ways, thinking and eternally

thinking of what might have been if things had fallen out otherwise, and all had been as it was not.

George shared his meal with Dick and went off to the mulelines. His charge sat alone in a shed with his face

in his hands. Before his tightshut eyes danced the face of Maisie, laughing, with parted lips. There was a

great bustle and clamour about him. He grew afraid and almost called for George.

'I say, have you got your mules ready?' It was the voice of the subaltern over his shoulder.

'My man's looking after them. Thethe fact is I've a touch of ophthalmia and can't see very well.

'By Jove! that's bad. You ought to lie up in hospital for a while. I've had a turn of it myself. It's as bad as

'About three nights a week. Fact is I'm in acting command of the nighttrain. It generally runs back empty to

'More or less. I shouldn't care to cross it alone, or with a subaltern's command for the matter of that, but the

'In the service and cashiered,' was the subaltern's first thought, so he refrained from putting any questions.

'I didn't mean to say so, but it is. Forgive meit's beastly impertinence I know, but you speak like a man

'I thought so. I say, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but you're a little down on your luck, aren't you? I saw

'SupposeI mean I'm a public school man myself. Couldn't I perhapstake it as a loan y'know and'

. . . I tell you what you could do for me, though, and put me under an everlasting obligation. Let me come

'I've been in an armoured train before. Only let me seehear some of the fun I mean, and I'll be grateful. I go

The young man thought for a minute. 'All right,' he said. 'We're supposed to be an empty train, and there's no

George and a horde of yelling amateur assistants had loaded up the mules, and the narrowgauge armoured

train, plated with threeeighths inch boilerplate till it looked like one long coffin, stood ready to start.

Two bogie trucks running before the locomotive were completely covered in with plating, except that the

leading one was pierced in front for the muzzle of a machinegun, and the second at either side for lateral

The trucks together made one long ironvaulted chamber in which a score of artillerymen were rioting.

'Lordy! 'Ere's a real live passenger for the Kew, Tanai, Acton, and Ealin' train. Echo, sir. Speshul edition!

'Thanks. I'll pay my footing,' said Dick, and relations of the most amiable were established ere silence came

with the arrival of the subaltern, and the train jolted out over the rough track.

'This is an immense improvement on shooting the unimpressionable Fuzzy in the open,' said Dick, from his

'Oh, but he's still unimpressed. There he goes!' said the subaltern, as a bullet struck the outside of the truck.

'We always have at least one demonstration against the nighttrain. Generally they attack the reartruck,

'Not tonight though! Listen!' said Dick. A flight of heavyhanded bullets was succeeded by yelling and

shouts. The children of the desert valued their nightly amusement, and the train was an excellent mark.

'Is it worth giving them half a hopper full?' the subaltern asked of the engine, which was driven by a

'I should think so! This is my section of the line. They'll be playing old Harry with my permanent way if we

'Hrrmph!' said the machine gun through all its five noses as the subaltern drew the lever home. The empty

cartridges clashed on the floor and the smoke blew back through the truck. There was indiscriminate firing at

the rear of the train, and return fire from the darkness without and unlimited howling. Dick stretched himself

'God is very goodI never thought I'd hear this again. Give 'em hell, men. Oh, give 'em hell!' he cried.

The train stopped for some obstruction on the line ahead and a party went out to reconnoitre, but came back,

cursing, for spades. The children of the desert had piled sand and gravel on the rails, and twenty minutes were

lost in clearing it away. Then the slow progress recommenced, to be varied with more shots, more shoutings,

the steady clack and kick of the machine guns, and a final difficulty with a halflifted rail ere the train came

'Now, you see why it takes an hour and a half to fetch her through,' said the subaltern, unshipping the

'It was a lark, though. I only wish it had lasted twice as long. How superb it must have looked from outside!'

'It palls after the first few nights. By the way, when you've settled about your mules, come and see what we

can find to eat in my tent. I'm Bennil of the Gunnersin the artillery linesand mind you don't fall over my

But it was all dark to Dick. He could only smell the camels, the haybales, the cooking, the smoky fires, and

the tanned canvas of the tents as he stood, where he had dropped from the train, shouting for George. There

was a sound of lighthearted kicking on the iron skin of the rear trucks, with squealing and grunting. George

The engine was blowing off steam nearly in Dick's ear; a cold wind of the desert danced between his legs; he

was hungry, and felt tired and dirtyso dirty that he tried to brush his coat with his hands. That was a

hopeless job; he thrust his hands into his pockets and began to count over the many times that he had waited

in strange or remote places for trains or camels, mules or horses, to carry him to his business. In those days he

could seefew men more clearlyand the spectacle of an armed camp at dinner under the stare was an ever

fresh pleasure to the eye. There was colour, light, and motion, without which no man has much pleasure in

living. This night there remained for him only one more journey through the darkness that never lifts to tell a

man how far he has travelled. Then he would grip Torpenhow's hand againTorpenhow, who was alive and

strong, and lived in the midst of the action that had once made the reputation of a man called Dick Heldar:

not in the least to be confused with the blind, bewildered vagabond who seemed to answer to the same name.

Yes, he would find Torpenhow, and come as near to the old life as might be. Afterwards he would forget

everything: Bessie, who had wrecked the Melancolia and so nearly wrecked his life; Beeton, who lived in a

strange unreal city full of tintacks and gasplugs and matters that no men needed; that irrational being who

had offered him love and loyalty for nothing, but had not signed her name; and most of all Maisie, who, from

her own point of view, was undeniably right in all she did, but oh, at this distance, so tantalisingly fair.

'Oh yes of course. What now? Take me to the camelmen. Take me to where the scouts sit when they come

in from the desert. They sit by their camels, and the camels eat grain out of a black blanket held up at the

The camp was rough and rutty, and Dick stumbled many times over the stumps of scrub. The scouts were

sitting by their beasts, as Dick knew they would. The light of the dungfires flickered on their bearded faces,

and the camels bubbled and mumbled beside them at rest. It was no part of Dick's policy to go into the desert

with a convoy of supplies. That would lead to impertinent questions, and since a blind noncombatant is not

'Now for one last bluffthe biggest of all,' he said. 'Peace be with you, brethren!' The watchful George

steered him to the circle of the nearest fire. The heads of the camelsheiks bowed gravely, and the camels,

scenting a European, looked sideways curiously like brooding hens, half ready to get to their feet.

'A Bisharin,' returned Dick, with perfect gravity. 'A Bisharin without saddlegalls. Therefore no charge of

Two or three minutes passed. Then 'We be kneehaltered for the night. There is no going out from the

'Twentyfive pounds English paid into the hand of the driver at my journey's end, and as much more into the

This was royal payment, and the sheik, who knew that he would get his commission on this deposit, stirred in

'For scarcely one night's journeyfifty pounds. Land and wells and good trees and wives to make a man

'Fool! I know that a camel can break his kneehalter, and the sentries do not fire if one goes in chase.

Twentyfive pounds and another twentyfive pounds. But the beast must be a good Bisharin; I will take no

Then the bargaining began, and at the end of half an hour the first deposit was paid over to the sheik, who

Dick heard the latter say: 'A little way out only. Any baggagebeast will serve. Am I a fool to waste my cattle

'And though I cannot see'Dick lifted his voice a little'yet I carry that which has six eyes, and the driver

will sit before me. If we do not reach the English troops in the dawn he will be dead.'

'Unless thou knowest let another man ride. Dost thou know? Remember it will be life or death to thee.'

'I know,' said the driver, sullenly. 'Stand back from my beast. I am going to slip him.'

'Not so swiftly. George, hold the camel's head a moment. I want to feel his cheek.' The hands wandered over

the hide till they found the branded halfcircle that is the mark of the Biharin, the lightbuilt ridingcamel.

'That is well. Cut this one loose. Remember no blessing of God comes on those who try to cheat the blind.'

The men chuckled by the fires at the cameldriver's discomfiture. He had intended to substitute a slow,

'Stand back!' one shouted, lashing the Biharin under the belly with a quirt. Dick obeyed as soon as he felt the

With a roar and a grunt the Biharin rose to his feet and plunged forward toward the desert, his driver

George caught Dick's arm and hurried him stumbling and tripping past a disgusted sentry who was used to

'Every stitch of my kit on that blasted dromedary,' Dick answered, after the manner of a common soldier.

The outcries ceased when the camel had disappeared behind a hillock, and his driver had called him back and

'Mount first,' said Dick. Then climbing into the second seat and gently screwing the pistol muzzle into the

small of his companion's back, 'Go on in God's name, and swiftly. Goodbye, George. Remember me to

A few minutes later he was shut up in a great silence, hardly broken by the creaking of the saddle and the soft

pad of the tireless feet. Dick adjusted himself comfortably to the rock and pitch of the pace, girthed his belt

tighter, and felt the darkness slide past. For an hour he was conscious only of the sense of rapid progress.

His head dropped on his chest and he tried to think, but the tenor of his thoughts was broken because he was

very sleepy. In the half doze in seemed that he was learning a punishment hymn at Mrs. Jennett's. He had

committed some crime as bad as Sabbathbreaking, and she had locked him up in his bedroom. But he could

He said them over and over thousands of times. The driver turned in the saddle to see if there were any

chance of capturing the revolver and ending the ride. Dick roused, struck him over the head with the butt, and

stormed himself wide awake. Somebody hidden in a clump of camelthorn shouted as the camel toiled up

rising ground. A shot was fired, and the silence shut down again, bringing the desire to sleep. Dick could

think no longer. He was too tired and stiff and cramped to do more than nod uneasily from time to time,

'I wish that I could see her. Halt the camel. At least let me hear the desert talk.'

The man obeyed. Out of the utter stillness came one breath of wind. It rattled the dead leaves of a shrub some

distance away and ceased. A handful of dry earth detached itself from the edge of a rail trench and crumbled

Those who have watched till the morning know how the last hour before the light lengthens itself into many

eternities. It seemed to Dick that he had never since the beginning of original darkness done anything at all

save jolt through the air. Once in a thousand years he would finger the nailheads on the saddlefront and

count them all carefully. Centuries later he would shift his revolver from his right hand to his left and allow

the eased arm to drop down at his side. From the safe distance of London he was watching himself thus

employed,watching critically. Yet whenever he put out his hand to the canvas that he might paint the

tawny yellow desert under the glare of the sinking moon, the black shadow of a camel and the two bowed

figures atop, that hand held a revolver and the arm was numbed from wrist to collarbone. Moreover, he was

The camel stretched out its neck and roared as there came down wind the pungent reek of camels in the

'They are moving in their camp. There is so much dust that I cannot see what they do.'

They could hear the hum of voices ahead, the howling and the bubbling of the beasts and the hoarse cries of

'Go forward, my child! Well it is that the dawn did not uncover us an hour ago.'

The camel headed straight for the column and the shots behind multiplied. The children of the desert had

arranged that most uncomfortable of surprises, a dawn attack for the English troops, and were getting their

'What luck! What stupendous and imperial luck!' said Dick. 'It's "just before the battle, mother." Oh, God has

Only'the agony of the thought made him screw up his eyes for an instant'Maisie . . .'

'Allahu! We are in,' said the man, as he drove into the rearguard and the camel knelt.

'Who the deuce are you? Despatches or what? What's the strength of the enemy behind that ridge? How did

you get through?' asked a dozen voices. For all answer Dick took a long breath, unbuckled his belt, and

shouted from the saddle at the top of a wearied and dusty voice, 'Torpenhow! Ohe, Torp! Cooee,

A bearded man raking in the ashes of a fire for a light to his pipe moved very swiftly towards that cry, as the

rearguard, facing about, began to fire at the puffs of smoke from the hillocks around. Gradually the scattered

white cloudlets drew out into the long lines of banked white that hung heavily in the stillness of the dawn

before they turned over wavelike and glided into the valleys. The soldiers in the square were coughing and

swearing as their own smoke obstructed their view, and they edged forward to get beyond it. A wounded

camel leaped to its feet and roared aloud, the cry ending in a bubbling grunt. Some one had cut its throat to

prevent confusion. Then came the thick sob of a man receiving his deathwound from a bullet; then a yell of

'No. Put me, I pray, in the forefront of the battle.' Dick turned his face to Torpenhow and raised his hand to

set his helmet straight, but, miscalculating the distance, knocked it off. Torpenhow saw that his hair was gray

And Dick came obediently, but as a tree falls, pitching sideways from the Bisharin's saddle at Torpenhow's

feet. His luck had held to the last, even to the crowning mercy of a kindly bullet through his head.