Rudyard Kipling 201 kill her. She turned and ran, choking and blinded, down the staircases that were empty of life to take refuge in a cab and go to her house across the Parks. There she sat down in the dismantled drawing-room and thought of Dick in his blindness, useless till the end of life, and of herself in her own eyes. Behind the sorrow, the shame, and the humiliation, lay fear of the cold wrath of the red-haired girl when Maisie should return. Maisie had never feared her companion before. Not until she found herself saying, “Well, he never asked me,” did she realize her scorn of herself. And that is the end of Maisie. F. Dick was reserved more searching torment. He could not realize at first that Maisie, whom he had ordered to go had left him without a word of farewell. He was savagely angry against Torpenhow, who had brought upon him this humiliation and troubled his miserable peace. Then his dark hour came and he was alone with himself and his desires to get what help he could from the darkness. The queen could do no wrong, but in following the right, so far as it served her work, she had wounded her one subject more than his own brain would let him know. “Tt’s all I had and I’ve lost it,” he said, as soon as the misery permitted clear thinking. “And Torp will think that he has been so infernally clever that I shan’t have the heart to tell him. J must think this out quietly.” “Hullo!” said Torpenhow, entering the studio after Dick had enjoyed two hours of thought. “I’m back. Are you feeling any better?” “Torp, I don’t know what to say. Come here.” Dick coughed huskily, wondering, indeed, what he should say, and how to say it temperately.