“The little bronze dancer is in the window yet,” repeated the obstinate Scot.
How Cyrus won through that long winter is his own affair. Our Square respects other people's troubles. It asked no questions. Finally winter broke and fled before a southeast wind full of fragrance, and the trees began to whisper important tidings to each other; and a pioneer butterfly of the deepest, most luminous purple-black, with buff edges to its wings, arrived and led the whole juvenile populace such a chase as surely never was since the Pied Piper fluted his seductions long ago; and the benches came out of their long retreat, fresh-painted, to stand sturdy and stiff in their old places; and so did Cyrus's thun-der-wagon, whereon he perched nightly once more, and was even more than before the taciturn, humorous, kindly, secret, friendly adviser to all and sundry.
Then, one crisp March evening he became aware of a strong, bent, feminine figure beckoning him from the curbstone. Clanging to a halt, he heard a voice, unforgettable through its tinge of foreign accent, say: —
“How do you do? I have been seeing your face all through my travels.” Cyrus took off his working-cap and shook hands. “So I have come back to look at it. It's thin. Would you like to be painted?”
“I don't think so, thank you. I've been sculped within an inch of my life.”
“So I have understood,” said the Very Great Woman with a smile not devoid of sympathy. “You are not done with it yet. She is coming.”
The face of Cyrus the Gaunt lighted marvelously.. “Coming back to Our Square?” he cried. Then the light faded. “But—”
“But me no buts. She is coming. I did it. I found that she had never finished you. So I told her that if she did not come back and finish, I would take you away from her and finish you myself. And, oh, I am as bad a sculptor as I am a good painter—-almost!” Her laughter rang in the chill air. “So she comes. And I have traveled all the way to this impossible spot to play traitor. The question is: Are you a man? You look it, at last!”
“The question is—Will you answer me one?”
“No! No! No! No! No! Put your questions where they belong. Farewell, my Phaëthon of the Slums.”