Rudyard Kipling 137 of the other Sundays. There are four more — yes, one, two, three, four — before you go. Good-bye, Maisie.” Maisie stood by the studio window, thinking, till the red-haired girl returned, a little white at the corners of her lips. “Dick’s gone off,” said Maisie. “Just when I wanted to talk about the picture. Isn’t it selfish of him?” Her companion opened her lips as if to speak, shut them again, and went on reading The City of Dreadful Night. Dick was in the Park, walking round and round a tree that he had chosen as his confidante for many Sundays past. He was swearing audibly, and when he found that the infirmities of the English tongue hemmed in his rage, he sought consolation in Arabic, which is expressly designed for the use of the afflicted. He was not pleased with the reward of his patient service; nor was he pleased with himself; and it was long before he arrived at the proposition that the queen could do no wrong. “It’s a losing game,” he said. “I’m worth nothing when a whim of hers is in question. But in a losing game at Port Said we used to double the stakes and go on. She do a Melancholia! She hasn’t the power, or the insight, or the training. Only the desire. She’s cursed with the curse of Reuben. She won’t do line-work, because it means real work; and yet she’s stronger than I am. I'll make her understand that I can beat her on her own Melancholia. Even then she wouldn't care. She says I can only do blood and bones. I don’t believe she has blood in her veins. All the same I lover her; and I must go on loving her; and if J can humble her inordinate vanity I will. I’ll do a Melancholia that shall be something like a Melancholia — ‘the Melancholia that transcends all wit.’ I’ll do it at once, con — bless bers