NE.

I hated you, because you could stand there so unmoved--

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Laughs.] Unmoved? Do you think so?

IRENE. --at any rate so intolerably self-controlled. And because you
were an artist and an artist only--not a man! [Changing to a tone full
of warmth and feeling.] But that statue in the wet, living clay, that
I loved--as it rose up, a vital human creature, out of those raw,
shapeless masses--for that was our creation, our child. Mine and yours.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Sadly.] It was so in spirit and in truth.

IRENE.

Let me tell you, Arnold--it is for the sake of this child of ours that I
have undertaken this long pilgrimage.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Suddenly alert.] For the statue's--?

IRENE.

Call it what you will. I call it our child.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

And now you want to see it? Finished? In marble, which you always
thought so cold? [Eagerly.] You do not know, perhaps, that it is
installed in a great museum somewhere--far out in the world?

IRENE.

I have heard a sort of legend about it.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

And museums were always a horror to you. You called them grave-vaults--

IRENE.

I will make a pilgrimage to the place where my soul and my child's soul
lie buried.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Uneasy and alarmed.] You must never see that statue again! Do you hear,
Irene! I implore you--! Never, never see it again!

IRENE.

Perhaps you think it would mean death to me a second time?

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Clenching his hands together.] Oh, I don't know what I think.--But how
could I ever imagine that you would fix your mind so immovably on that
statue? You, who went away from me--before it was completed.

IRENE.

It was completed. That was why I could go away from you--and leave you
alone.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Sits with his elbows upon his knees, rocking his head from side to
side, with his hands before his eyes.] It was not what it afterwards
became.

IRENE.

[Quietly but quick as lightning, half-unsheathes a narrow-bladed sharp
knife which she carried in her breast, and asks in a hoarse whisper.]
Arnold--have you done any evil to our child?

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Evasively.] Any evil?--How can I be sure what you would call it?

IRENE.

[Breathless.] Tell me at once: what have you done to the child?

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

I will tell you, if you will sit and listen quietly to what I say.

IRENE.

[Hides the knife.] I will list