“Surely he cannot be working,” thought the doctor, as he followed the man down a glass-covered paved passage, and through a high doorway across which a heavy curtain fell. “If so, he must possess resolution almost more than mortal.”
He passed beyond the curtain, and looked round him curiously.
The studio was only dimly lit now, for daylight was fast fading. On a great open hearth, with dogs, a log-fire was burning; and beside it, on an old-fashioned oaken settle, sat a woman in a loose cream-coloured tea-gown. She was half turning round to speak to Reginald Brune, who stood a little to her left, clad in a long blouse, fastened round his waist with a band. He had evidently recently finished working, for his hands still bore evident traces of labour, and in front of him, on a raised platform, stood a statue that was not far from completion. The doctor's eyes were attracted from the woman by the log-fire, from his patient, by the lifeless, white, nude figure that seemed to press forward out of the gathering gloom. The sculptor and his wife had not heard him announced, apparently, for they continued conversing in low tones, and he paused in the doorway, strangely fascinated—he could scarcely tell why—by the marble creation of a dying man.
The statue, which was life size, represented the figure of a beautiful, grave youth, standing with one foot advanced, as if on the point of stepping forward. His muscular arms hung loosely; his head was slightly turned aside as in the attitude of one who listens for a repetition of some vague sound heard at a distance. His whole pose suggested an alert, yet restrained, watchfulness. The triumph of the sculptor lay in the extraordinary suggestion of life he had conveyed into the marble. His creature lived as many mollusc men never live. Its muscles seemed tense, its body quivering with eagerness to accomplish—what? To attack, to repel, to protect, to perform some deed demanding manfulness, energy, free, fearless strength.
“That marble thing could slay if necessary,” thought Gerard Fane, with a thrill of the nerves all through him that startled him, and recalled him to himself.
He stepped forward to the hearth quietly, and Brune turned and took him by the hand.
“I did not hear you,” the sculptor said. “The man must have opened the door very gently. Sydney, this is Dr Gerard Fane, who is kindly looking after me.”
The woman by the fire had risen, and stood in the firelight and the twilight, which seemed to join hands just where she was. She greeted the specialist in a girl's young voice, and he glanced at her with the furtive thought, “Does she know yet?”
She looked twenty-two, not more.