Chapter 13

The sun went down an hour ago,
I wonder if I face towards home;
If I lost my way in the light of day
How shall I find it now night is come?
--Old Song.

'MAISIE, come to bed.'

'It's so hot I can't sleep. Don't worry.'

Maisie put her elbows on the window-sill and looked at the moonlight on
the straight, poplar-flanked road. Summer had come upon
Vitry-sur-Marne and parched it to the 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,