and ask your advice about. Now I
must get back to work.'

'Try to find out before next Sunday what I am,' said Dick. 'Don't take
my word for anything I've told you. Good-bye, darling, and bless you.'

Maisie stole away like a little gray mouse. Dick watched her till she
was out of sight, but he did not hear her say to herself, very soberly,
'I'm a wretch,--a horrid, selfish wretch. But it's Dick, and Dick will
understand.'

No one has yet explained what actually happens when an irresistible
force meets the immovable post, though many have thought deeply, even as
Dick thought. He tried to assure himself that Maisie would be led in
a few weeks by his mere presence and discourse to a better way of
thinking. Then he remembered much too distinctly her face and all that
was written on it.

'If I know anything of heads,' he said, 'there's everything in that face
but love. I shall have to put that in myself; and that chin and mouth
won't be won for nothing. But she's right. She knows what she wants, and
she's going to get it. What insolence! Me! Of all the people in the wide
world, to use me! But then she's Maisie. There's no getting over that
fact; and it's good to see her again. This business must have been
simmering at the back of my head for years.... She'll use me as I used
Binat at Port Said.

She's quite right. It will hurt a little. I shall have to see her every
Sunday,--like a young man courting a housemaid. She's sure to come
around; and yet--that mouth isn't a yielding mouth. I shall be wanting
to kiss her all the time, and I shall have to look at her pictures,--I
don't even know what sort of work she does yet,--and I shall have to
talk about Art,--Woman's Art! Therefore, particularly and perpetually,
damn all varieties of Art. It did me a good turn once, and now it's in
my way. I'll go home and do some Art.'

Half-way to the studio, Dick was smitten with a terrible thought. The
figure of a solitary woman in the fog suggested it.

'She's all alone in London, with a red-haired impressionist girl, who
probably has the digestion of an ostrich. Most red-haired people have.

Maisie's a bilious little body. They'll eat like lone women,--meals at
all hours, and tea with all meals. I remember how the students in Paris
used to pig along. She may fall ill at any minute, and I shan't be able
to help.

Whew! this is ten times worse than owning a wife.'

Torpenhow entered the studio at dusk, and looked at Dick with ey