Rudyard Kipling 189 from the window. A cavalryman of the little garrison in the town was talking to Kami’s cook. The moonlight glittered on the scabbard of his saber, which he was holding in his hand lest it should clank inopportunely. The cook’s cap cast deep shadows on her face, which was close to the conscript’s. He slid his arm round her waist, and there followed the sound of a kiss. “Faugh!” said Maisie, stepping back. “What’s that?” said the red-haired girl, who was tossing uneasily outside her bed. “Only a conscript kissing the cook,” said Maisie. “They've gone away now.” She leaned out of the window again, and put a shawl over her nightgown to guard against chills. There was a very small night-breeze abroad, and a sun-baked rose below nodded its head as one who knew unutterable secrets. Was it possible that Dick should turn his thoughts from her work and his own and descend to the degradation of Suzanne and the conscript? He could not! The rose nodded its head and one leaf therewith. It looked like a naughty little devil scratching its ear. Dick could not, “because,” thought Maisie, “he is mind, — mine, — mine. He said he was. I’m sure I don’t care what he does. It will only spoil his work if he does; and it will spoil mine too.” The rose continued to nod it the futile way peculiar to flowers. There was no earthly reason why Dick should not disport himself as he chose, except that he was called by Providence, which was Maisie, to assist Maisie in her work. And her work was the preparation of pictures that went sometimes to English provincial exhibitions, as the notices in the scrap-book proved, and that were invariably rejected by the Salon when Kami was plagued into allowing her to send them up. Her work in the future, it seemed, would be the preparation of pictures on exactly similar lines which would be rejected in exactly the same way —