“That statue,” he said, “was given me by a friend of mine. He used to pass many months with me at a time. He loved the quietude of these surroundings as I love them. At the back of the house I had a studio built for him where he worked. When he was not working he sat in the garden. He loved it. He used to say he loved the flowers both in sunlight and in moonlight, or drenched in tears of rain. He said the Spirit of the Garden moved among them. That was the Figure he made of Her. Look at it well,” he went on, with a grave earnestness. “Is it not wonderful?”
“Wonderful!” echoed Barnabas from his heart.
“It is to me,” said the old man quietly, “a perfect embodiment of an inspiration. So much is often lost. First the inspiration-flash has to become articulate—to be shaped in the brain—before the hand even starts to fashion it. It loses enormously in the process. To me that is one of the few things that has not lost. It is the first inspiration-flash embodied in marble. It has never been exhibited. My friend had a curious dislike to exhibiting his work. He was a strange man.”
He lapsed into a thoughtful silence. Pippa was lying back in her chair, her hands tucked under her chin—a usual attitude of hers. She was gazing at the statue with wide grey eyes. Barnabas had a certain presentiment of a name that would shortly be mentioned.
“Would you like to see the place where he worked?” asked the old man suddenly.
Barnabas got up from his chair. Pippa came across to him and slid her hand into his. Her imagination was vividly at work.
They left the circular room and went down a passage. The old man took a key from his pocket and unlocked a door.
“This is the place,” he said.
It was a large room, well lighted. There were plaster casts of heads on various shelves, and several plaster plaques hanging on the walls. At one side of the studio Barnabas saw the plaster figure of a little faun. It was the same as the marble faun in his garden. Pippa did not notice it. She was gazing at a figure, enveloped in an old sheet, which was on a stand in the middle of the room.
“It was the last piece of work he started here,” said the old man, pointing to it. “It has remained just as he left it. Nothing has been moved. I dust the place myself. No one ever entered it but my friend and I and the workmen he employed. They were always foreigners, and came from a distance. But now no one enters but I. You are the first to come into the place.”