She spoke with a half-whimsical smile.
“Have I?”
“The sorrow of leaving all this, of leaving the Hermes. I didn’t know it was possible to grow to care for a lifeless thing as I care for him. Sometimes I believe the marble has actually retained nothing of Praxiteles as a man. I mean as apart from a sculptor. But he must have been full of almost divine feelings and conceptions, or he could never have made my Hermes. No man can make the divine without having divinity in him. I’ve learnt more here in these few days than I have learnt in all my years.”
“From the statue of a Pagan. Isn’t that strange?”
“No, I don’t think so. For I was able to see the Christianity in it. I know what Praxiteles was only able to feel mysteriously. Sometimes in London I’ve heard people—you know the sort of people I mean—regretting they didn’t live in the old Greek world.”
“I’ve regretted that.”
“Have you? But not in their way. When I look at the Hermes I feel very thankful I have lived since.”
“Tell me just why.”
“Because I live in a world which has received definitely and finally the message the Hermes knew before it was sent down.”
She took away her arm from the olive tree and sighed.