“Ah, me! Was it not thus that Aphrodite breathed the spark of life, the material essence of reality into the ivory form of Galatea? Such is the power of that worship of the ideal that the Philistine calls love, over the human heart!
“There is little more to be told. My picture became a shrine at which I worshipped by day and dreamed by night. Its possession was happiness. The failure to find the original was the acme of misery. I lost all interest in the art that had created the painting, and the very thought of devoting the talent which had developed my ideal to subjects that must ever be less worthy became abhorrent to me. My all of art, my all of life, my loftiest aspirations were there in the beautiful painting, the model for which had come to me in my dreams.
“Ah, my dear doctor!” exclaimed Parkyn, as he extended his hand imploringly towards me, “do not laugh at me. Be something more than a man of science, something more than a materialist, and do not discourage me when I say that I know that my ideal lives, know that somehow, somewhere, I am to meet her!
“You have heard my story, my dear friend. You are the first to whom I have told it, and shall be the last.”
“My dear Parkyn,” I said, when my friend had finished his story, “the very essence of materialism itself, should respect the artistic and emotional nature that could develop such an experience as you have had. I am, myself, by no means so materialistic as you suppose. We have not yet solved the mysteries of psychology. We know nothing of the workings of human affinities, and there are those, even among us men of science, who are not altogether blind to the possibilities of the occult. Men have been shattered upon the rocks and shoals of ideality before, and will be again. Not all could have so pure and fair an ideal as you have described. Your vision was extraordinary, and although as a physician I might descant to you on the relation of over-work and lack of exercise to figments of the imagination, still as a man, and one in whom the finer sensibilities are not yet dead, I must acknowledge that I not only sympathize with you, but I—well, I myself suspect that there is somewhere a substantial foundation for your dream. It is by no means impossible that you may one day find your model, and, my dear fellow, I sincerely hope you will.”
Parkyn grasped my hand warmly, and stood in silence for a moment, then, with an expression of gratification and happiness such as I had never before seen on his face, he said slowly:
“You do, indeed, understand me, doctor. Your medical philosophy is tinctured with just enough of the fire of romance, your heart has just enough of the emotional attributes of the true artist, to enable you to be something more than a mere compounder and prescriber of drugs. I understand now, why you have a penchant for psychology. Wise is he who hath read the chapter on hearts in the book of human life!”
* * * * *
The end of the college term was drawing near, and even Favell and Richardson had settled down to something like earnest work preparatory to examinations. I had just finished my dissections, as had my room-mates several weeks before, hence had no occasion to visit that gloomy and dismal room above stairs known as the hall of anatomy. When, therefore, we heard one day of a marvellously interesting subject that had just been brought over from Blackwell’s Island, our interest was not especially excited. The dissecting room is by no means haunted by students who have finished their prescribed course in anatomy. It seems, however, that one of Favell’s friends had induced him to go up to the dissecting-room one morning to inspect the anatomic wonder, which I had understood somewhat vaguely, was the body of a remarkably beautiful woman. Parkyn, Richardson and myself were just preparing to go to dinner, meanwhile wondering what had become of the ever-hungry Favell, when that worthy broke into the room in a state of great excitement, crying, “Say, boys, you just ought to see the subject that’s come in from the Island! Gee, whiz! but it’s a beauty—the handsomest thing in the shape of a woman that ever was born! Why, half the artists and all the newspaper men in New York have been up to see it. They’re all crazy over it. You boys must go up and look at it to-night, and if you don’t say that body is the most beautiful thing you ever saw, I’ll buy the dinners for the crowd. I mean you, especially, Parkyn. I suspect that you are much cleverer than any of those daubers who have seen it, and I know you’ll revel in the beauties of what might have been an artist’s model.”
Richardson and myself promptly agreed to visit the nine days wonder, but it was with extreme difficulty that I induced Parkyn to accompany us. When he did finally yield to my entreaties he turned a deaf ear to my urgent request that he take some sketching materials with him.