rable.'

'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 frame that I have my hand on? There she is. What do you think of
her?'

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.

'Well?'

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 sake--whatever
this mad blankness might mean--she must make no sign. Her voice choked
with hard-held tears as she answered, still gazing at the wreck--'Oh,
Dick, it is good!'

He heard the little hysterical gulp and took it for tribute. 'Won't you
have it, then? I'll send it over to your house if you will.'

'I? Oh yes--thank 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 drawing-room 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
red-haired girl when Maisie should return. Maisie had never feared her
companion before. Not until she found herself saying, 'Well, he never
asked me,' did she realise her scorn of herself.

And that is the end of Maisie.

* * * * *

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 m