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.

She was angry with the heat, with Kami, and with her work, but she was exceedingly angry with Dick.
She had written to him three times,--each time proposing a fresh treatment of her Melancolia.