Chapter 9 - Page 2

peculiar thought.

You might as well try to rewrite Hamlet. It will be a waste of time.

'No, it won't,' said Maisie, putting down the teacups with a clatter to
reassure herself. 'And I mean to do it. Can't you see what a beautiful
thing it would make?'

'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
spoke between his teeth.

'You don't understand,' said Maisie. 'I think I can do it.'

Again the voice of the girl behind him--

'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 be turned to labour----

I fancy Maisie means to embody herself in the picture.'

'Sitting on a throne of rejected pictures? No, I shan't, dear. The notion in
itself has fascinated me.--Of course you don't care for fancy heads, Dick.

I don't think you could do them. You like blood and bones.'

'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
tasting three-quarters of all the sorrow in the world.

'She was a woman,' said Maisie, 'and she suffered a great deal,--till she
could suffer no more. Then she began to laugh at it all, and then I painted
her and sent her to the Salon.'

The red-haired girl rose up and left the room, laughing.

Dick looked at Maisie humbly and hopelessly.

'Never mind about the picture,' he said. 'Are you really going back to
Kami's for a month before your time?'

'I must, if I want to get the picture done.'

'And that's all you want?'

'Of course. Don't be stupid, Dick.'

'You haven't the power. You have only the ideas--the 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 you
need?'

'I must do my work.'

'Your work--bah! . . . No, I didn't mean that. It's all right, dear. Of
course you must do your work, and--I think I'll say good-bye for this
week.'

'Won't you even stay for tea?
'No, thank you. Have I your leave to go, dear? There's nothing more you
particularly want me to do, and the line-work doesn't matter.'

'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