No More Learning

You're an omen. Come here. "

Binkie swung head downward for a moment without speaking.

"Rather like holding a guinea-pig; but you're a brave little dog, and
you don't yelp when you're hung up. It is an omen. "

Binkie went to his own chair, and as often as he looked saw Dick walking
up and down, rubbing his hands and chuckling. That night Dick wrote a
letter to Maisie full of the tenderest regard for her health, but saying
very little about his own, and dreamed of the Melancolia to be born. Not
till morning did he remember that something might happen to him in the
future.

He fell to work, whistling softly, and was swallowed up in the clean,
clear joy of creation, which does not come to man too often, lest he
should consider himself the equal of his God, and so refuse to die at
the appointed time. He forgot Maisie, Torpenhow, and Binkie at his feet,
but remembered to stir Bessie, who needed very little stirring, into a
tremendous rage, that he might watch the smouldering lights in her eyes.

He threw himself without reservation into his work, and did not think of
the doom that was to overtake him, for he was possessed with his notion,
and the things of this world had no power upon him.

"You're pleased today," said Bessie.

Dick waved his mahl-stick in mystic circles and went to the sideboard
for a drink. In the evening, when the exaltation of the day had died
down, he went to the sideboard again, and after some visits became
convinced that the eye-doctor was a liar, since he could still see
everything very clearly.

He was of opinion that he would even make a home for Maisie, and that
whether she liked it or not she should be his wife.
The mood passed next
morning, but the sideboard and all upon it remained for his comfort.

Again he set to work, and his eyes troubled him with spots and dashes
and blurs till he had taken counsel with the sideboard, and the
Melancolia both on the canvas and in his own mind appeared lovelier than
ever. There was a delightful sense of irresponsibility upon him, such
as they feel who walking among their fellow-men know that the
death-sentence of disease is upon them, and, seeing that fear is but
waste of the little time left, are riotously happy. The days passed
without event.

Bessie arrived punctually always, and, though her voice seemed to Dick
to come from a distance, her face was always very near. The Melancolia
began to flame on the canvas, in the likeness of a woman who had known
all the sorrow in the world and was laughing at it. It was true that the
corners of the studio draped themselves in gray film and retired into
the darkness, that the spots in his eyes and the pains across his head
were very troublesome, and that Maisie's letters were hard to read and
harder still to answer. He could not tell her of his trouble, and he
could not laugh at her accounts of her own Melancolia which was always
going to be finished. But the furious days of toil and the nights of
wild dreams made amends for all, and the sideboard was his best friend
on earth.

Bessie was singularly dull. She used to shriek with rage when Dick
stared at her between half-closed eyes. Now she sulked, or watched him
with disgust, saying very little.

Torpenhow had been absent for six weeks. An incoherent note heralded his
return. "News! great news!