he bone. The grass was dry-burnt 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
bell-handle by the closed gate cast a bar of inky black that caught
Maisie's eye and annoyed her.

'Horrid thing! It should be all white,' she murmured. 'And the gate
isn't in the middle of the wall, either. I never noticed that before.'

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 angry with Dick.

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 autumn--for her pride's sake she could not return
earlier--she 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 not know that Maisie could take care of herself.

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 i