truth applies equally to a book which has been discussed beyond all
proportion to its rank among the stories of Mr Kipling. _The Light
That Failed_ is often read as the high and tragical love story of Dick
Heldar; but it is really nothing of the kind. It really belongs to
_The Day's Work_. As the love story of Dick Heldar it is of small
account. Mr Kipling thinks very little of it from that point of view.
He has even allowed it, upon that side, to be deprived of all its
significance in order to meet the needs of a popular actor. Mr Kipling
is not the man to sell his conscience. Therefore his admirers may
infer from the fact that he has sold Dick and Maisie to British and
American playgoers that Dick and Maisie are not regarded by their
author as of the first importance. We cannot think of Mr Kipling as
allowing one screw of the ship that found herself to be misplaced. But
he has cheerfully allowed his story of Dick and Maisie to be turned
with a few strokes of the pen into an effective curtain for a
negligible play.

This does not mean that _The Light That Failed_ is not a characteristic
and a fine achievement. It means that its character and fineness have
nothing to do with Dick and Maisie or with any of that stuff of the
story which contrives to exist behind the footlights of Sir Johnston
Forbes Robertson's theatre. _The Light That Failed_ must not be read
as the love story of a painter who goes blind. It must be read, with
_.007_ and _The Maltese Cat_, as an enthusiastic account of the day's
work of a newspaper correspondent. The really vital passages of the
story have all to do with Mr Kipling's chosen text of work for work's
sake. Dick's work and not Dick himself is the hero of the play. The
only incident which really affects us is the scraping out of his last
picture. We do not bother in the least as to whether Maisie returns to
him or stays away; because we do not believe in the reality of Maisie