ressed triumph.
Never before had success tasted so sweet upon the tongue. 'You see the
sort of things I paint. D'you like it?'

Maisie looked at the wild whirling rush of a field-battery going into
action under fire. Two artillery-men stood behind her in the crowd.

'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 lead-driver
drives better nor you, Tom. See 'ow cunnin' 'e's nursin' 'is 'orse.'

'Number Three'll be off the limber, next jolt,' was the answer.

'No, 'e won't. See 'ow 'is foot's braced against the iron? 'E's all
right.'

Dick watched Maisie's face and swelled with joy--fine, rank, vulgar
triumph. She was more interested in the little crowd than in the
picture.

That was something that she could understand.

'And I wanted it so! Oh, I did want it so!' she said at last, under her
breath.

'Me,--all me!' said Dick, placidly. 'Look at their faces. It hits 'em.
They don't know what makes their eyes and mouths open; but I know. And I
know my work's right.'

'Yes. I see. Oh, what a thing to have come to one!'

'Come to one, indeed! I had to go out and look for it. What do you
think?'

'I call it success. Tell me how you got it.'

They returned to the Park, and Dick delivered himself of the saga of his
own doings, with all the arrogance of a young man speaking to a woman.

From the beginning he told the tale, the I--I--I's flashing through the
records as telegraph-poles fly past the traveller. Maisie listened and
nodded her head. The histories of strife and privation did not move her
a hair's-breadth. 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
across half the world, speaking as he had never spoken in his life
before.

And in the flood-tide 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 women.

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

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