“Persephone. She is the daughter who is lost, you know, and Demeter is looking for her sorrowing. Well, she’ll find her next year, I hope.”
Wallingthorpe made an eloquent gesture expressing despair.
“You wretched boy, you don’t know what you are doing!” he cried. “You have talents, believe me; you perhaps have genius. You are wasting the best years of your life and prostituting your gifts. I must force you to believe it.”
Tom laughed.
“You’d better give it up,” he said. “I am quite hardened.”
“But you’ll starve,” said Wallingthorpe; “you’ve got to think of that. Life-size blocks of Carrara are not to be had for the asking, and on my sacred word of honour no one will buy Demeter or her daughter.”
“Well, then, I’ll starve,” said Tom, cheerfully. “But surely it would be prostituting my gifts if I simply used them to prevent my starving. Eh?”
Wallingthorpe was silent, and Tom continued—
“But, of course, I shan’t starve. Those things ‘don’t happen,’ as Mrs. Humphry Ward says of miracles. Anyhow, before I starve I shall finish the Demeter and her daughter, and then my blood will be on the heads of the British public.”
“You miserable boy!” ejaculated Wallingthorpe again, adjusting the end of his cigar. “You are an apostate, and in the good old days apostates were very justly looked down on by Christians and heretics alike. You have sacrificed to Demeter and Persephone, and all the hierarchy of Olympus.”