"And I form one of your satirical studies?"
"Yes. I referred to you as Galatea, and to myself as Pygmalion. You supply the feminine interest which is so necessary. I pictured you as a statue amidst stifling conventionality, and I was the artist who tried to bring you to life."
"With what success?"
He thrust his hands into his pockets, and his shoulders drooped listlessly. "The artist," he said, "fell in love with her the moment the marble became human. He was a fool."
"I am so sorry," she said gently; and for a brief moment—a very brief moment—her hand rested in his. Whereupon the moon was constrained to disappear behind a cloud to hide her smile. "And what happened to her?"
"Oh," he said, "being a woman, she decided to torture Pygmalion. She came out on the lawn at night with him, and, by the music of her voice and the charm of her beauty, inflicted an hour's exquisite pain. I am like a man," he said, with an abrupt descent from the impersonal, "who knows that on the morrow he will be stricken with blindness, and is looking for the last time on a sunset." Whereupon Captain Craighouse sighed like the classic furnace, and Lady Dorothy Oaklands smiled again, though her eyes were glistening with a mysterious dew. "To-morrow morning," he went on, "the sculptor, sometimes known as Don Quixote, is going away to forget about the statue. It is the only thing he can do."
Her eyes were lowered to the ground. "The woman—Galatea," she murmured—"she just forgets, I suppose?"
"Women forget easily," he said, and thought he spoke the truth.
"Listen," she said, and her voice was so soft that he could just make out the half-whispered words; "let me tell you the real story of Pygmalion and Galatea. When the marble became life, she loved the artist who had created her soul. But he didn't return her love; it had been an experiment with him. So the woman in her froze and died, and Galatea became a statue again."
He caught her hands in his, and his eyes flashed like brilliants. "Dorothy!" he cried, "you are not jesting? You are not just—cruel?"