158 The Light That Failed the thing merely to pique Maisie. I can do it now because I have it inside me. Binkie, I’m going to hold you up by your tail. You’re an omen. Come here.” Binkie swung head downward for a moment without speaking. “Rather like holding a guinea-pig; but you’re a brave little dog, and you don’t yelp when you're hung up. It is an omen.” Binkie went to his own chair, and as often as he looked saw Dick walking up and down, rubbing his hands and chuckling. That night Dick wrote a letter to Maisie full of the tenderest regard for her health, but saying very little about his own, and dreamed of the Melancholia to be born. Not till morning did he remember that something might happen to him in the future. He fell to work, whistling softly, and was swallowed up in the clean, clear joy of creation, which does not come to man too often, lest he should consider himself the equal of his God, and so refuse to die at the appointed time. He forgot Maisie, Torpenhow, and Binkie at his feet, but remembered to stir Bessie, who needed very little stirring, into a tremendous rage, that he might watch the smoldering lights in her eyes. He threw himself without reservation into his work, and did not think of the doom that was to overtake him, for he was possessed with his notion, and the things of this world had no power upon him. “You're pleased today,” said Bessie. Dick waved his mahl-stick in mystic circles and went to the sideboard for a drink. In the evening, when the exaltation of the day had died down, he went to the sideboard again, and after some visits became convinced that the eye-doctor was a liar, since he could still see everything very clearly. He was of opinion that he would even make a home for Maisie, and that