188 The Light That Failed mured. “And the gate isn’t in the middle of the wall, either. I never noticed that before.” Maisie was hard to please at that hour. First, the heat of the past few weeks had worn her down; secondly, her work, and particularly the study of a female head intended to represent the Melancholia and not finished in time for the Salon, was unsatisfactory; thirdly, Kami had said as much two days before; fourthly, — but so completely fourthly that it was hardly worth thinking about, — Dick, her property, had not written to her for more than six weeks. She was angry with the heat, with Kami, and with her work, but she was exceedingly angry with Dick. She had written to him three times, — each time proposing a fresh treatment of her Melancholia. Dick had taken no notice of these communications. She had resolved to write no more. When she returned to England in the autumn — for her pride’s sake she could not return earlier — she would speak to him. She missed the Sunday afternoon conferences more than she cared to admit. All that Kami said was, “Continuez, mademotselle, continuez toujours,” and he had been repeating the wearisome counsel through the hot summer, exactly like a cicada, — an old gray cicada in a black alpaca coat, white trousers, and a huge felt hat. But Dick had tramped masterfully up and down her little studio north of the cool green London park, and had said things ten times worse than continuez, before he snatched the brush out of her hand and showed her where the error lay. His last letter, Maisie remembered, contained some trivial advice about not sketching in the sun or drinking water at wayside farmhouses; and he had said that not once, but three times, — as if he did not know that Maisie could take care of herself. But what was he doing, that he could not trouble to write? A murmur of voices in the road made her lean