No More Learning

" Dick spoke between his teeth.

"You don't understand," said Maisie. "I think I can do it. "

Again the voice of the girl behind him--

"Baffled and beaten back, she works on still;
Weary and sick of soul, she works the more.

Sustained by her indomitable will,
The hands shall fashion, and the brain shall pore,
And all her sorrow shall be turned to labour----

I fancy Maisie means to embody herself in the picture. "

"Sitting on a throne of rejected pictures? No, I shan't, dear. The
notion in itself has fascinated me. --Of course you don't care for fancy
heads, Dick. I don't think you could do them. You like blood and bones. "

"That's a direct challenge. If you can do a Melancolia that isn't merely
a sorrowful female head, I can do a better one; and I will, too. What
d'you know about Melacolias? " Dick firmly believed that he was even then
tasting three-quarters of all the sorrow in the world.
"She was a woman," said Maisie, "and she suffered a great deal,--till
she could suffer no more. Then she began to laugh at it all, and then I
painted her and sent her to the Salon. "

The red-haired girl rose up and left the room, laughing.

Dick looked at Maisie humbly and hopelessly.

"Never mind about the picture," he said. "Are you really going back to
Kami's for a month before your time? "

"I must, if I want to get the picture done. "

"And that's all you want? "

"Of course. Don't be stupid, Dick. "

"You haven't the power. You have only the ideas--the ideas and the
little cheap impulses. How you could have kept at your work for ten
years steadily is a mystery to me. So you are really going,--a month
before you need? "

"I must do my work. "

"Your work--bah!