192 The Light That Failed “Yes, dear; yes, dear.” She staggered to her bed like a wearied child, and as she buried her face in the pillows she muttered, “I think —I think... . But he ought to have written.” Day brought the routine of the studio, the smell of paint and turpentine, and the monotone wisdom of Kami, who was a leaden artist, but a golden teacher if the pupil were only in sympathy with him. Maisie was not in sympathy that day, and she waited impatiently for the end of the work. She knew when it was coming; for Kami would gather his black alpaca coat into a bunch behind him, and, with faded flue eyes that saw neither pupils nor canvas, look back into the past to recall the history of one Binat. “You have all done not so badly,” he would say. “But you shall remember that it is not enough to have the method, and the art, and the power, nor even that which is touch, but you shall have also the conviction that nails the work to the wall. Of the so many I taught,” — here the students would begin to unfix drawing-pins or get their tubes together, — “the very so many that I have taught, the best was Binat. All that comes of the study and the work and the knowledge was to him even when he came. After he left me he should have done all that could be done with the color, the form, and the knowledge. Only, he had not the conviction. So today I hear no more of Binat, — the best of my pupils, — and that is long ago. So today, too, you will be glad to hear no more of me. Continuez, Mesdemoiselles, and, above all, with conviction.” He went into the garden to smoke and mourn over the lost Binat as the pupils dispersed to their several cottages or loitered in the studio to make plans for the cool of the afternoon. Maisie looked at her very unhappy Melancholia, restrained a desire to grimace before it, and was hurry