s admirers may
infer from the fact that he has sold Dick and Maisie to British and
American playgoers that Dick and Maisie are not regarded by their
author as of the first importance. We cannot think of Mr Kipling as
allowing one screw of the ship that found herself to be misplaced. But
he has cheerfully allowed his story of Dick and Maisie to be turned
with a few strokes of the pen into an effective curtain for a
negligible play.

This does not mean that _The Light That Failed_ is not a characteristic
and a fine achievement. It means that its character and fineness have
nothing to do with Dick and Maisie or with any of that stuff of the
story which contrives to exist behind the footlights of Sir Johnston
Forbes Robertson's theatre. _The Light That Failed_ must not be read
as the love story of a painter who goes blind. It must be read, with
_.007_ and _The Maltese Cat_, as an enthusiastic account of the day's
work of a newspaper correspondent. The really vital passages of the
story have all to do with Mr Kipling's chosen text of work for work's
sake. Dick's work and not Dick himself is the hero of the play. The
only incident which really affects us is the scraping out of his last
picture. We do not bother in the least as to whether Maisie returns to
him or stays away; because we do not believe in the reality of Maisie
and we cannot imagine anything she may or may not do as affecting
anyone very seriously. Dick's wrestle with his picture is another
matter. He and his friends may talk a great deal of nonsense about
their work (nonsense which would strictly require us to condemn every
good page which Mr Kipling has written), but there is no doubt whatever
that the enthusiasm of men for men's work is the vital and moving
principle of _The Light That Failed_. The motive of the whole story is
the motive of _The Bridge-Builders_. The rest is merely accessory.

_The Light That Failed_ is full of instruction for the close critic of
Mr Kipling. We discover in it three out of the many levels of
excellence in which he moves. First there is a cunning artificer
pretending to a knowledge and admiration which he does not really
possess--an artificer who tries to impose Maisie and the Red-Haired
Girl upon us in the same deceiving way as the way in which he tried to
impose upon us Mrs Hawksbee and the Copleigh girls. Second, there is a
clever writer of soldier stories, showing us some nasty fighting at
close range, with