Obedient to his words they both gazed curiously at the quaint early Norman relief. It represented a centaur, with a drawn bow and arrow, aiming at a retreating lion, which was sneaking off in humorously depicted terror.
“That is King Stephen,” said the stone-carver, pointing to the centaur. “And the beast he is aiming at is Queen Maud. Stephen’s zodiacal sign was Sagittarius, and the woman’s was Leo. Hence the arrow he is aiming.”
Vennie’s mind, reverting to her fanciful distinction between the two eminences, and woman-like, associating everything she saw with the persons of her own drama, at once began to discern, between the retreating animal and the fair-haired daughter of the owner of Leo’s Hill, a queer and grotesque resemblance.
She heaved a deep sigh. What would she not give to see her poor priest-centaur aim such an arrow of triumph at the heart of his insidious temptress!
“I think you have made them stand out wonderfully clear,” she said gently. “Hasn’t he, Mr. Taxater?”
The stone-carver threw down the instrument he was using, and folded his arms. His dark, foreign-looking countenance wore a very curious expression.
“I wanted to finish this job,” he remarked, in a slow deep voice, “before I turn into stone myself.”
“Come, come, my friend,” said Mr. Taxater, while Vennie stared in speechless alarm at the carver’s face. “You mustn’t talk like that! You people get a wrong perspective in things. Remember, this is no longer the Stone Age. The power of stone was broken once for all, when certain women of Palestine found that stone, which we’ve all heard of, lifted out of its place! Since then it is to wood—the wood out of which His cross was made—not to stone, that we must look.”
The carver raised his long arm and pointed in the direction of Leo’s Hill. “Twenty years,” he said, “have I been working on this stone. I used to despise such work. Then I grew to care for it. Then there came a change. I loved the work! It was the only thing I loved. I loved to feel the stone under my hands, and to watch it yielding to my tools. I think the soul of it must have passed into my soul. It seemed to know me; to respond to me. We became like lovers, the stone and I!” He laughed an uneasy, disconcerting laugh; and went on.