Shall I see Torp before
he goes?"
"Oh, yes. You'll see him," said the Nilghai.
CHAPTER XIII
The sun went down an hour ago,
I wonder if I face towards home;
If I lost my way in the light of day
How shall I find it now night is come?
--Old Song
"Maisie, come to bed."
"It's so hot I can't sleep. Don't worry."
Maisie put her elbows on the window-sill and looked at the moonlight on the
straight, poplar-flanked road. Summer had come upon Vitry-sur-Marne and parched
it to the bone. The grass was dry-burnt in the meadows, the clay by the bank of
the river was caked to brick, the roadside flowers were long since dead, and
the roses in the garden hung withered on their stalks. The heat in the little
low bedroom under the eaves was almost intolerable. The very moonlight on the
wall of Kami's studio across the road seemed to make the night hotter, and the
shadow of the big bell-handle by the closed gate cast a bar of inky black that
caught Maisie's eye and annoyed her.
"Horrid thing! It should be all white," she murmured. "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 Melancolia 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.
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