“Ah! the Hermes is to blame for that, I suppose,” he said. “I’ve seen the photographs of it. That is why I did not go to Olympia with you. Partly also, because it is cold. I’m sorry you threw those photographs away; they were very pretty.”
“They were abominations,” said Tom, and sat down.
“And so you are going to set up a very life-size Apollo—six foot four in his sandals—as I did,” said Manvers, “and you will gnash your teeth over it every day for a month, and then you will return to your senses.”
“For the first time in my life I am fully sane,” said Tom. “I have seen perfection, and I know what it means. I shall find out the way to do it. Don’t laugh—I shall. It won’t be easy, but it can be done. It has been done once, and it can be done again. What a blind fool I have been!”
Manvers crossed one leg over the other.
“Yes, it’s delicious to feel like that,” he said. “I quite envy you. I felt like it once—and those things don’t happen twice. I congratulate you with all my heart, and I shall congratulate you more when you have recovered.”
Tom snorted with indignation.
“I am as sane as you are,” he said, “but I shan’t set up a life-size statue just yet; I have got to study first. I know what the language means, and I am going to read all that exists in it. I have got the key to it all. The whole thing used to puzzle me; it was an unknown tongue, obsolete and dead, I thought it. But now I have the means of finding it all out.”
Manvers closed his eyes.
“Nunc dimittis,” he said piously. “I suppose we may expect a new Greek god every year for the present. What will you do with them, by-the-by? Life-size figures take up such a lot of room in a studio.”