98 The Light That Failed ground that we had been fighting on for three days. There were twelve hundred dead; and we hadn’t time to bury them.” “How ghastly!” “I had been at work on a big double-sheet sketch, and I was wondering what people would think of it at home. The sight of that field taught me a good deal. It looked just like a bed of horrible toadstools in all colors, and — I’d never seen men in bulk go back to their beginnings before. So I began to understand that men and women were only material to work with, and that what they said or did was of no consequence. See? Strictly speaking, you might just as well put your ear down to the palette to catch what your colors are saying.” “Dick, that’s disgraceful!” “Wait a minute. I said, strictly speaking. Unfortunately, everybody must be either a man or a woman.” “Tm glad you allow that much.” “In your case I don’t. You aren’t a woman. But ordinary people, Maisie, must behave and work as such. That’s what makes me so savage.” He hurled a pebble towards the sea as he spoke. “I know that it is outside my business to care what people say; I can see that it spoils my output if I listen to ’em; and yet, confound it all,” — another pebble flew seaward, — “I can’t help purring when I’m rubbed the right way. Even when I can see on a man’s forehead that he is lying his way through a clump of pretty speeches, those lies make me happy and play the mischief with my hand.” “And when he doesn’t say pretty things?” “Then, belovedest,” — Dick grinned, — “I forget that I am the steward of these gifts, and I want to make that man love and appreciate my work with a thick stick. It's too humiliating altogether; but I suppose even if