Chapter 13 - Page 2

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 in the town was talking to Kami's cook. The moonlight
glittered on the scabbard of his sabre, which he was holding in his hand
lest it should clank inopportunely. The cook's cap cast deep shadows on
her face, which was close to the conscript's. He slid his arm round her
waist, and there followed the sound of a kiss.

'Faugh!' said Maisie, stepping back.

'What's that?' said the red-haired girl, who was tossing uneasily outside
her bed.

'Only a conscript kissing the cook,' said Maisie.

'They've gone away now.' She leaned out of the window again, and put a
shawl over her nightgown to guard against chills. There was a very small
night-breeze abroad, and a sun-baked rose below nodded its head as one
who knew unutterable secrets. Was it possible that Dick should turn his
thoughts from her work and his own and descend to the degradation of
Suzanne and the conscript? He could not! The rose nodded its head and
one leaf therewith. It looked like a naughty little devil scratching its ear.

Dick could not, 'because,' thought Maisie, 'he is mind,--mine,--mine. He
said he was. I'm sure I don't care what he does. It will only spoil his work
if he does; and it will spoil mine too.'

The rose continued to nod it the futile way peculiar to flowers. There was
no earthly reason why Dick should not disport himself as he chose, except
that he was called by Providence, which was Maisie, to assist Maisie in
her work. And her work was the preparation of pictures that went
sometimes to English provincial exhibitions, as the notices in the
scrap-book proved, and that were invariably rejected by the Salon when
Kami was plagued into allowing her to send them up. Her work in the
future, it seemed, would be the preparation of pictures on exactly similar
lines which would be rejected in exactly the same way----
The red-haired girl threshed distressfully across the sheets. 'It's too hot
to sleep,' she moaned; and the interruption jarred.

Exactly the same way. Then she would divide her years between the little
studio in England and Kami's big studio at Vitry-sur-Marne. No, she
would go to another master, who should force her into the success that
was her right, if patient toil and desperate endeavour gave one a right to
anything. Dick had told her that he had worked ten years to understand
his craft. She had worked ten years, and ten years were nothing. Dick
had said that ten years were nothing,--but that was in regard to herself
only. He had said--this very man who could not find time to write--that
he would wait ten years for her, and that she was bound to come back to
him