The Model has taken the pose.
Demetrios casts the dark lump of clay upon the table. He presses it, kneads it, lengthens it out into human form: a sort of barbarous monster takes shape under his burning fingers: he looks.
The motionless corpse preserves its attitude of passion. But a thin thread of blood trickles from the right nostril, flows upon the lip, and falls, drop by drop, under the half-opened mouth.
Demetrios continues. The rough figure takes life and precision. A prodigious left arm circles over the body as if it were clasping someone in a tight embrace. The muscles of the thigh stand out violently. The heels are bent upwards.
When night mounted from the earth and darkened the low chamber, Demetrios had finished the statue.
He had it carried to his studio by four slaves. That very evening, by lamplight, he had a block of Parian marble rough-hewed, and a year after that day he was still working at the marble.
IV
PITY
“Gaoler, open! Gaoler, open!”
Rhodis and Myrtocleia knocked at the closed door.