# The Quickening of Galatea

Extracted from "Appleton's" magazine, v.9 1907, pp. 146-154. Accompanying illustration by G. C. Wilmshurst omitted.
THE QUICKENING OF GALATEA
By HENRY C. ROWLAND
MABLEY was giving a studio tea to Lady Avis Darran, whose brother, Lord Dingwall Darran, had married Mabley's sister.
It was a singularly polite and uncomfortable occasion, especially for Dinard, where the British sometimes go to relax and recover from the depressing influences of their own country. This was because Mabley was nouveau riche and a climber, in an obvious and awkward sort of way. When he inherited his money he had passed from meat canning to high art because the latter seemed to him to be a short cut to culture, or at least an excuse for the absence of this quality on the ground of Bohemianism. He had not yet learned that true Bohemianism is a postgraduate course in art.
Mabley did not look cultured; he was short and thick, with too much blood and too many clothes. Also, most of his metabolism was a bit noisy; he breathed audibly, especially when discussing art; he ate audibly, slept audibly, and was persistently audible in expressing his views when with people whom he considered socially inferior. His sister, Lady Darran, was, on the contrary, the epitome of social grace. She was a dream of beauty, of perfect poise in all but her temper, which sometimes grabbed the bits and twisted, and as perfectly finished a woman of the world as a very expensive education could produce. This is often the case in the female of the Mabley kind.
Mabley's father had been born in England, his mother in Germany, and Mabley in the United States. It was the first time that he had had been in a foreign country, and at times he was so overcome by the novelty of his surroundings that he would almost forget that he was probably the only one in the circle about him who was worth forty millions of dollars.
On this particular occasion they gave him no support worth mentioning, for the Lady Avis, whom be had secretly determined to marry, had frozen into a pillar of ice the moment that his blazing face had risen above her horizon. Lady Avis disliked Americans intensely because her dearest friend, who had been "disappointed" through an American girl, had told her that they were vulgar. Mabley's studio was at Dinard, and several of his guests were American artists, and the mere accent and colloquialisms of these were enough to freeze the Lady Avis into a very beautiful snow maiden and limit her conversation to such remarks as, "R'really! How ver'ry odd!" and "I'm sure I don't know!"
This refrigerating manner proceeding from a source of such striking and classic beauty, had reduced the social atmosphere of the studio to a point where poor Mabley's teeth had begun to chatter. His friends had tried to come to his support, but had, one by one, been congealed into frozen silence. Then they had taken to strong drink, which failed utterly of absorption, and a following reaction and a sad silence had been the result. The women drank their tea nervously, and wondered how soon they might decently escape into the warm French sunshine. Mabley had smoked so many cigarettes that he was getting fogged about the muzzle, and his fat hands were beginning to shake. His sister's gayety had flared up and sizzled out like badly made fireworks.
The only one entirely at ease was the Lady Avis, and her repose was of a sort which made the others shiver, like people in the Zoo who watch the polar bear sitting in his tank in midwinter, calmly eating raw fish. Lady Avis was eating macaroons in precisely the same manner, calmly oblivious, or at least indifferent to her medium.
Just as Lady Darran was is inning to feel that she would scream, the wintry silence of the studio was violently rent in sunder. There sounded in the distance the chug-a-chug of an approaching motor car, which even an unskilled ear could estimate as exceeding the speed limit by not more than eighty kilometers an hour. As it drew nearer the horn began to honk in a ribald and disorderly manner.
"Honk honk, honk, hank, hank!" it yelped in rhythmic measure. A moment later there came a protesting whine as the brake was thrown on, the suddenly accelerated whir of the motor, then silence.
A rich, rollicking barytone was wafted through the open windows.
"Look out, Mab—duck for cover! Not a drop of 'essence' left in my tank, and twenty kilometers to the next supply station."
Steps sounded on the path and a cold dew appeared on Mablel's crimson face.
"It's Jack Randall" he whispered to his sister. "He'll just raise the dooce with our tea party. What will Lady Avis think!"
Lady Darran's delicious color changed a trifle. It had taken all of her strength of purpose to jilt the gentleman approaching when asked to become Lady Darran, and she had never been able to rid her mind of the unpleasant suspicion that the victim had accepted her infidelity with a philosophy scarcely consistent with a grande passion.
"It's a shame!" she is an in a low, angry voice, when again the rollicking tones came floating through the window:
"Don't try to hide, you fat reprobate. I know you are there. I will show you how to mix a new cocktail; just learned the recipe from a bloomink Britisher down at the Casino."
Lady Avis turned to her sister-in-law.
"Who is this extr'ord'nary person?" she asked icily.
For once Lady Darran displayed a certain embarrassment.
"He—is a—sculptor," she answered hesitatingly. "—an old—eh, acquaintance of ours."
Lady Avis raised her symmetrical eyebrows.
"An Amer'r'rican?"
"Yes, a Mr. Randal—" began Lady Darran, when the door of the studio was thrown violently open and a young man plunged into the room.
For an instant he paused and caught his breath; then he glanced quickly about and observed with keen eyes Mabley's comical expression of hopeless despair, the cold indignation in the eyes of Lady Darran, the staged faces of the guests, and, last of all, the curious scrutiny of the Lady Avis, who was looking at him as she might have looked at an exuberant wet dog.
Shock, surprise, and amusement followed each other across the man's handsome, talented face. He laughed, then seeing the expression of the others, he laughed even more. Then suddenly the amusement gave way to an expression of resentful mockery.
"I beg your pardon, Mab," he said. "I really had not heard of your loss."
"What loss?" demanded Mabley in a peevish voice.
"I don't know—haven't I broken in upon a funeral—or have you just been telling one of your funny stories?"
"I don't know what you're talkin' about," growled the host resentfully.
"Then what is the matter? Has there been some national catastrophe? Has the President attacked the canners—or has King Edward been run over by a water wagon—or what?"
"How extr'ord'nary!" murmured the Lady Avis. Her big blue eyes opened wide and rested on Mr. Randal with growing bewilderment. Mabley was getting even redder, and a stony light gleamed from the fine eyes of Lady Darran.
Randal turned resentfully to the host.
"Why don't you introduce me, Mab? Don't look so sulky! How was I to know that you were giving a tea party? You never told me anything about it; if you had, I would have stayed away, of course."
He glanced about the circle and laughed again. Lady Avis's blue eyes were fixed upon him with a singular intentness. She was mystified, to be sure, but there was something more than mere curiosity in the look with which she studied the man's handsome, passionate face with its dark, devil-driven eyes and broad, white forehead. For genius was written in every individual feature. The face itself was square, Celtic in type, but Irish rather than French. The jaw was firm, the mouth wide with even rows of white teeth, the nose short, straight, delicately chiseled, the forehead broad. But the wonderful eyes were what startled the English girl from her frozen calm. They were very long and deep and of an indescribable color, restless, eager, mocking, and aggressive. They caught her own and held them with a force which was almost physical; and the cool, even pulse of the Lady Avis leaped so violently that it made her catch her breath while a sudden pink glow crept up beneath her Parian marble skin. The sculptor's quick eyes caught her startled look and flashed mockingly. He turned to Mabley.
"Why don't you introduce me? Never mind. I know some of your guests already by reputation, and the others"—he glanced at the artists and grinned—"by their lack of it!" He bowed to Lady Darran. "My homage, Venus!" He glanced toward her husband, a big, handsome fellow, who was in the Guards. "Salve, Mars!" He turned slowly to the Lady Avis, and his voice, seriously respectful, belied the mockery in his eyes.
"Galatea I know only by reputation—although myself a disciple of Pygmalion!" He bowed low, then turned to the host whose tortured face had turned from red to saffron.
"Why don't you offer me something to drink, Mab?" His restless eye fell upon a guitar which was lying on a divan, and with a step so quick that it was almost a leap, he seized it and ran his fingers lightly over the strings. "That's so—I wasn't asked; I'll have to earn my drink, I suppose." He twisted a key, struck a chord, then turned with the slow, graceful flourish of a troubadour to face the Lady Avis, who was watching him with wide, fascinated eyes.
There were three bass notes, a minor chord, and then his throaty, vibrant voice welled out with a low, harplike purity. The air was plaintive, inconstant, like the words obviously impromptu, and suggested the wistful melody of the sweet old Breton folk songs.
With his mocking eyes turned upward he sang lightly:
Galatea, marble maiden,
Mine thou art and mine alone.
Shall a heart with hunger laden
Throb but for a lifeless stone?
Venus, grant a lover's yearning,
Lend thy warmth to this fair thing!
So in keep thy altar burning,
Evermore thy praises sing!
He struck a final minor chord, then for an instant looked forward and smiled into the face of the Lady Avis. The smile was in itself an apology for the Bohemian impertinence.
The girl's lips parted and a wave of color swept across her lovely face. Randal smiled again, then tossed the guitar lightly upon a pile of cushions and turned to Mabley, who was staring hopelessly at his sister, as if for a cue.
"There!" said Randal challengingly, "have I earned my drink? A song is always the price of a drink in Bohemia!" He picked up a decanter, poured out some whisky, and drank it. "Thanks! No," sardonically, "I really must go. Anybody for Dinard? No? Then I'm off! Au 'voir!"
With a sweeping bow he passed through the open door, swinging it shut behind him. A moment later there came the sudden whir of machinery, then a grind as he threw in the dutch. "Honk, honk—hank, hank, honk," blatted the horn, and then the distance swallowed the ribald sounds.
Mabley breathed loudly and angrily. He tried to speak but failed, and looked helplessly at his sister.
"It is a shame!" cried Lady Darran passionately. "It is an outrage! If one can't give a quiet tea without having one's guests insulted——"
"Jack did not insult anybody," said one of the men quickly. "L' esprit tout excuse!' He did not mean to be rude."
"I s'pose really I ought to have asked him," muttered Mabley. "He was a class-mate of mine—but he always does such crazy stunts——"
"Deuced clever, I thought, if it was a bit cheeky," drawled the good-natured guardsman, "but one rather expects that sort of thing in a studio. Lovely voice he's got."
The Lady Avis's blue eyes were like big sapphires and her breath was coming quickly. The pink glow had not left her perfect face. Mabley, glancing at her covertly, found it impossible to tell whether she was deeply offended, angry, frightened, or merely surprised. In any case, it was evident that her glacial rampart had suffered a heavy thaw.
"Who is that person?" she asked, and her voice was faintly tremulous.
"He is an American sculptor named Randal, Lady Avis," said one of the men.
"Really?" The English beauty was beginning to recover her poise. "Does he do good work?" she asked.
"His work is like his behavior—extraordinary. It is wild and erratic. You see, the chap is really a genius, and not amenable to usual methods. For instance, if you were to order a bust of yourself, he would probably not sculp you as you really are, but in some fantastic way; in some character with which he might endow you in his own mind. For instance, if you don't mind my saying so, he would be quite capable of chiseling you as Galatea quickening into life and leaning down, perhaps, with her lips pursed up to kiss Pygmalion—or some similar idiotic conception."
The Lady Avis thoughtfully studied her bracelet. Presently she turned to her informer.
"Is Mr. Randal usually—like that?"
"By no means. You have seen him at his worst. I think that he was hurt at not being asked, and took that way of showing it. When he hasn't one of his wild fits he is apt to be very quiet—and he is at all times a hard worker."
"R'really? " The Lady Avis relapsed into her thoughtful silence, and shortly afterwards the party broke up.
That evening, as Lady Darran was about to retire, her sister-in-law said to her in a cool, even voice:
"I have been thinking the matter over, and have decided to have my bust done for mamma's birthday present instead of a portrait—a painting, you know."
"Indeed? Who are you going to sit for? Mr. Durand or M. Verne?"
"Neither," answered Lady Avis in her most liquid tone. "From what I have been told of his work, I believe that mamma would like a head done by your—eh, acquaintance, Mr. Randal."
Mr. Randal stood in the middle of his studio and stared with a contemptuous eye at a plaster cast of the head of Lady Avis Darran.
On the other side of the studio, reclining on a window seat, lounged an immaculately dressed young man who inhaled a Turkish cigarette and watched Mr. Randal curiously. This was Mr. Robert Marie de Lamballe de Savoie-Carignan Neufville. He was known among his French intimates as "Bawbb," which was the Gallicized version of "Bob," for Mr. Neufville had been educated in England and spoke French with a slightly English and English with a slightly French accent. Whenever he displeased his Parisian friends they darkly hinted that he was inclined to "le snobberie."
Mr. Randal turned to his friend "Bob."
"How do you like it?" he asked.
"It ees reeping, bah J'jove!" answered Bob. "Absolutely parfec'!"
Randal frowned. "That's just the trouble," he growled. "It is too perfect. It isn't art; it's simply reproduction—a replica in plaster of that girl's perfect head!"
"R'right you are, ol' chap," said Bob, "but I'm hanged if I see how you can help that! When you get it cut out of the marble it weel not be one degree colder than the original!"
Randal stared broodingly at his work.
"Lady Avis has sat for me about a dozen times and each time she has been exactly like that thing—only colder! She sits there like a block of ice; marble is much too warm for her! She ought to be sculped in ice to really get truthful delineation."
"Can't you get her to thaw a bit—take her off her guard and shock or frighten or—eh—interest her a bit?"
"I might if she were alone, but Lady Darran always comes with her and just when I begin to see the chance of a glimmer of human emotion in her face her sister-in-law says something and spoils it all. I wish I'd never tackled the thing—no, I don't!"
Bob laughed.
"I say," said he, "maybe you malign Lady Darran and flatter the Lady Avis. Maybe she hasn't eet in her, ye know!"
"That is what most people think," answered Randal quietly. "That is no doubt what she thinks herself—but it is a mistake." He studied the head thoughtfully and when he spoke there was an odd wistfulness in his voice, which made his friend glance at him keenly. "Lady Avis Darran has heart enough and to spare—if only one could find the way to it!"
He turned to his friend, whom he regarded doubtfully for a moment, then walked slowly across the studio and laid his hand upon a sheet which covered a bust standing upon a pedestal.
"I would not show this to anyone else, Bob, but you are a gentleman and a fellow-sculptor and you will understand. Something which I once saw, only once, in Lady Avis's face suggested it. It is her other nature—her dual nature—the complementary part, you understand?" He twitched the sheet from the bust.
Bob sprang lightly to his feet, crossed the studio, and stood before the model. It was a ravishing thing even though at first sight it seemed profane. The bust was that of a laughing bacchante, her head thrown back, her pretty lips curved in a tantalizing smile as she looked up coquettishly at something just above her. The broad forehead, short Grecian nose, the perfect mouth with its curved upper lip and pouting lower one was flawlessly that of the Lady Avis, but the whole charming face was so changed and warmed and humanized by the rollicking expression of joyous abandon to the pleasures of the moment, that, at first sight, it smote with a sense of shock one familiar with the divine original. It was like putting a cigarette between the lips of a Venus Callipyge, or ballet skirts upon her sister of Milo.
Bob whistled softly; his lustrous eyes glowed.
"Gad!" he gasped, true even in emotion to his Anglicism. "What a parfec'ly deelicious thing! Eet is marvelous! Eet is almos' unholy! What a face! What a neck!" He shook his head slowly from side to side. "What a triumph of expression—for the features are absolutely parfec'—ident'cale!" He laughed softly to himself. "If the Lady Avis ever looked like that it would be a pity! Think of the trail of broken hearts! As it is, the men are all afraid of her!"
"Perhaps that is the reason," said Randal vaguely.
"It would be interesting to let her see it!"
"She never will!" answered Randal, with emphasis. "It is altogether too like to be decent. To tell the truth, I feel a bit uncomfortable at having done it, but you see, I was working up a vague first impression. Her face is that of a goddess; this is the face of a nymph—and not a very well-ordered nymph at that!"
He stepped to the corner of the studio and picked up an iron dumb-bell which was lying there. Bob stared at him in amazement.
"Hop on!" he cried. "What are you up to, J'jack?"
"I'm going to smash her!"
"Oh, bah J'jove, don' do that. Don't, ol' chap! You can alter it a bit, you know—change the features—make the nose half a millimeter longer!"
"Then I would hate her and smash her anyway. No, I'm going to smash her now! "
A dawning intelligence is an to gleam in Bob's dark eyes.
"Eef you change her you will hate her—and so you are going to smash her head! Ah, my boy, my boy—you are in love with her!"
Randal paused to stare at his friend in angiy amazement.
"In love with Lady Avis!" he growled.
"Not a bit of it. You are in love with her face on your naughty bacchante."
A knock sounded on the door, which was slightly ajar. Randal, not caring to be caught in the act of beating in the head of a bacchante with a ten-pound dumb-bell, quickly threw the sheet over the bust.
"Entrez!" he called sharply. The door swung open and Lady Darran, followed by the Lady Avis, entered the studio.
"Good morning, Jack," said Lady Darran. "We have come an hour earlier because we want to go to a tea at the Casino later. You don't mind, do you?" She threw a friendly nod to Bob.
"Certainly not," replied Randal, a bit stiffly. He looked curiously at Lady Avis, then at the nearly finished bust.
"How do you like it?" he asked.
"Very much," answered the English girl unemotionally. She let her blue eyes rest meditatively upon the beautiful reproduction of her head, then turned to the sculptor.
"You are not very pleased with it yourself, are you?" she said, as one stating a fact.
Randal glanced at her with quick surprise.
"No," he replied frankly, "I don't care for it a bit."
"Don't you think it like?"
"Too much so."
"How very unflattering!" cried Lady Darran.
"Let me finish my statement—or at least amend it," said Randal. "The head is precisely that of Lady Avis as she sits for her portrait. I had hoped to get her as she looks"—he glanced keenly at the girl—"when under some emotion."
Lady Avis's eyes flashed up to his, then instantly fell.
"I think that I prefer it as it is," she murmured, in her dear, cold voice.
"I quite agree with you," said Lady Darran vexedly. "Unless a thing has a dash of the rococo it never quite pleases you, Jack." Her eyes fell upon the veiled bust of the bacchante which was at her elbow.
"What is this?" she asked, laying her gloved hand on the sheet.
"Oh—nothing—" answered Randal. "Don't uncover it, please!"
There was a peremptory note in his voice which brought a flush of anger to the cheeks of Lady Darran. It had not been so long since all peremptory orders had proceeded from her. In a sudden fit of pique and utterly regardless of studio etiquette she began to tug at the sheet.
Randal's dark eyes blazed.
"Please do not uncover that bust," he said icily. "I do not care to have it seen. It is a study of a personal character."
Lady Darran stared at him in astonished anger, her hand still clutching the sheet. Bob's eyes sparkled with delighted anticipation.
"Le dénoument doit éire dramatique!" he whispered through his teeth.
Deeply injured in her pride. Lady Darran sought to pass the matter off as a joke and at the same time to satisfy her curiosity.
"You are too modest. Jack," she said with a laugh, and with a quick tug drew the sheet from the bacchante. Lady Avis, turning in surprise and vexation to protest with her sister-in-law, looked full at the bust and her blue eyes opened wide.
"Jack!" cried Lady Darran in ecstasy, "what a perfectly delicious head! How mean, not to want us to see it! What a fascinatingly pretty, naughty face! And what a dear little nuque! She's a raving, tearing beauty—even if she does look a trifle—eh—grisée. What an adorable profile." She stepped in front of the bust and all at once a puzzled expression crept into her eyes. "Do you know—" she began, and then, startled out of her self-control, she cried in a shrill voice: "It's Avis!"
"Indeed?" said Randal. His face was very pale and his eyes were like two big coals.
Lady Darran threw him an angry look, which was lost, for he was watching Lady Avis. Her big blue eyes were devouring every line and lineament of the bacchante with a deep intentness which left her quite oblivious of the others. Presently she sighed deeply and turned to Lady Darran.
"Do you really think that her face is like mine?" she asked eagerly.
"My dear," cried Lady Darran, with another angry glance at Randal, "it is your face robbed of its purity by the genius of the sculptor!"
"That ees not fair!" murmured Bob, beneath his breath. Randal, very pale, caught his lower lip beneath his white teeth and stood silently, his dark eyes fixed on Lady Avis.
The girl glanced at her sister-in-law in a curious way, and Randal, trained as he was in the interpretation of facial expression, failed utterly to read her thought; her big blue eyes passed slowly from Lady Darran to the bust for which she had sat and for a moment she examined carefully its pure and perfect features; from this she turned slowly to the bacchante, then back at the other, evidently comparing the two.
"'Sacred and profane love!'" muttered Bob softly to himself.
Lady Avis took a step toward the bacchante and studied it long and earnestly, and slowly the crimson color crept up beneath her creamy skin and the deep blue of her eyes darkened to sapphire. Lady Darran was white and tense, Randal also, and Bob, his dramatic soul in ecstasy, watched the tableau avidly. In striking contrast, the joyous, reckless face of the beautiful bacchante looked up in laughing abandon, eyes mirthful, eager lips half parted, inviting a careless laughing kiss, her round little chin tilted audaciously toward any who might see.
Lady Avis turned slowly to Randal; her eyes were humid, her breath coming rapidly.
"That was not a nice thing for you to do," she said in her clear voice. "Of course, I do not know how Americans regard such things—but among Englishmen it would be considered—caddish!"
Randal stepped toward her and threw out one arm. "Lady Avis," he said, "you are unfair! I did this only for myself, as a study, to work out an idea which I hoped I might use to some extent in the other. In this respect it was a failure and I was about to destroy it when you came in!"
"What!" cried Lady Avis, her eyes big with a sort of horror. "You were going to destroy it?"
"Of course I was!" said Randal bitterly. "Do you think that I would let anybody else see it?" He stooped quickly, gripped the iron dumb-bell at his feet, and raised it to his shoulder.
"Step back, please," he said coldly. "The stuff is apt to fly." He raised the dumb-bell.
"Oh, no—no—!" cried Lady Avis, and at the same instant Randal brought the iron down with all of the strength of his athletic arm, full upon the smiling face of the bacchante.
Lady Darran gave a slight scream, a "sacré" escaped from Bob's compressed lips. The blue eyes of Lady Avis filled; she turned away.
"What a horrid temper you've got, Jack!" said Lady Darran.
"Sorry to make a scene," drawled Randal. "Shockin' brutality on my part, to smash the poor girl's head just when she was enjoying herself so much!"
Both women glanced at him quickly. The courteous, well-bred manner had been swept away by magic. The chivalric expression had vanished and two mocking devils leered from his glowing eyes.
"Sorry you look at it as you do," he said carelessly to Lady Avis, "because"—he jerked his head toward the fragments of the bacchante—"that was really perfect of you—not as you ever were, of course, but as you might be if you could manage to escape from your conventional world of cold-storage emotions!"
He gave a short laugh and, turning, is an to kick the plaster fragments under the bench.
"If you are going to be rude," said Lady Darran haughtily, "we will wish you good morning. I am sorry that you feel that you have failed with Lady Avis's bust."
"So am I, I'm sure," said Randal ironically. "Now, if I could only have combined the two"—he turned to Lady Avis—"but you must admit that you did not help me much." He walked to the door and held it open.
"Good morning," said Lady Darran, with a slight nod which included Bob.
Lady Avis said nothing, but as she passed through the open door her blue eyes lifted and looked straight into the angry ones of Mr. Randal; and suddenly a crimson wave of color flooded the faces of both.
Mr. Randal leaned back among the cushions of his window seat and lazily strummed on his guitar a plaintive Breton melody; his eyes rested thoughtfully upon a pastel drawing of Lady Avis's head which he had done from memory several days before.
"Perfect face," he said to himself, and laid down the guitar to examine the sketch more closely. "Like the bacchante—rather, only less of the gamine. Funny, that I do this sort from memory and can't work it into what I do from life. I suppose my seeing the complementary part of people is a sort of gift—like hearing only the second part when some one plays an air—or the colors that belong with other colors. Yet lots of people say these clash!" He glanced at his Orientally discordant cushions, which were really not discordant at all if one's retina were educated up to them.
"Funny," mused Randal, "how I seem to fee the real values of the 'off' things—like minor chords and clashing colors and cold women!" He looked intently at the pastel and his deep eyes kindled. "If she only were like that!" he whispered under his breath, "ye gods—if she only were!"
An automobile came humming down the road and stopped before his gate. Randal was annoyed; he did not care to be disturbed, so he continued to play and stare at the pastel of the Lady Avis until a subtle subconsciousness caused him to turn suddenly and see without surprise that the original was walking up the path to the studio. His heart gave a sudden thump, however, on perceiving that she was alone.
Randal rose slowly and threw open his door. Lady Avis surveyed him calmly.
"Good morning," she said. "I came to speak to you about the head. Have you a few moments to spare?"
"I am quite at your service. Please come in."
Lady Avis entered and took the chair which Randal offered her. The sculptor remained standing.
"It occurred to me yesterday after we had left," she is an, "that possibly you might have thought I did not wish to have you finish the bust."
"Not at all," said Randal. "You had expressed yourself as pleased with it. I was the one who was dissatisfied."
"But, you know, Lady Darran said——"
"Lady Darran forfeited her right to any opinion when she very rudely uncovered the other bust."
Lady Avis turned toward the window. Her breath was coming more rapidly and the sculptor could see that there was something else which she wished to say. All at once her eyes fell upon the pastel.
"Who did that?" she asked quickly.
"I did it; quite often I use the crayon as a guide to mallet and chisel."
"Let me see it, please."
Randal placed the head in the proper light. Lady Avis studied it for a moment, then sighed.
"Would you mind telling me why it is," she asked, "that the things which you do of me from memory have so much—soul; and what you have done from me, myself, is so—so—cold?"
"Perhaps," said Randal, "it is because I can in some way feel what I do not actually see."
Avis's eyes fell.
"You mean that you only imagine it," she said. "That you endow my portrait with something which really is not there."
"No," replied Randal. "I mean that I feel it to be there even when I cannot see it—and once or twice I have seen it."
Avis looked up quickly and the color swept into her face. Her whole expression was one of eagerness.
"Have you really?" she cried. "I thought that you would, and I did so hope that you would catch it and fix it in the marble—and you did catch it in that darling bacchante—and when you crushed her"—her eyes filled—"it hurt me—just as if you had crushed me!"
Avis looked up at him eagerly; her face was flushed, lips parted, eyes humid, and the tears were beginning to gather. Randal looked down upon her in amazement, and all at once his heart gave a mighty throb, for there, looking up at him, rich in emotion, but that of grief rather than gladness, was his nymph, his earth-maiden. It was as if one had answered the invited caress of the bacchante with a rough word instead of kisses.
Randal stepped back; his eyes turned fiercely toward his all but finished work.
"My soul!" he cried passionately, "I believe that that thing lies!" He walked with menacing step toward the bust, contemplated it for an instant, then turned to Avis:
"That thing is not you! That is only a mask! You are you!" He stepped in front of the girl and looked intently into her face. "I was right all of the time—and didn't know it! That bacchante was closer to the truth than this artificial thing! Was it not? Answer me!"
"Yes!" whispered Avis faintly.
"Has no one ever seen it before? Am I the first?"
"Yes. That is why it hurt me so when you destroyed the bacchante. Don't you see—she was—she was me—the real me—and I loved her the moment that I saw her—and"—she pointed to the bust—"I hated that thing from the first!"
"So did I!" cried Randal, and his eyes began to glow. He snatched the dumb-bell from a corner and then turned to Avis.
"Shall I smash her?"
"Yes! yes!" cried the girl between her teeth. Her face had suddenly become that of some beautiful, fierce, half-human creature of the woods.
Crash! The stately head dissolved into a dozen fragments. Randal turned to Avis and laughed. It was not a mirthful laugh; rather, it was the triumph of a faun who settles some score with a dryad. Ages past, Cytherean groves rang with such laughter.
But Avis, strangely excited, laughed also and in the same language; and then, suddenly the eyes of the sculptor met those of the girl and the color flamed into the faces of both. The conventional present arose to rebuke the naked past. Avis dropped her eyes, ashamed of the lawless emotion of the past moment as if it had been some flagrant act. Her beautiful face regained its classic purity—or coldness. But Randal had seen and heard and his heart was clashing joyful chords. He walked straight to Avis and took her hands in his, and at the touch the earth-maiden smiled at him through her deep-blue eyes.
"I love you!" he said strongly. "I brought you to life. You are mine, Avis—are you not?"
And Avis, clasped in his strong arms, admitted that he spoke the truth.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1933, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 90 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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