were it not for you?" she cried
reproachfully. "How much longer will you repulse me?"

"That depends on you, mum," he ventured to observe.

"Ah! you are cold!" she said reproachfully; "yet surely I am worthy of
the adoration of the proudest mortal. Judge me not by this marble
exterior, cunningly wrought though it be. Charms are mine, more dazzling
than any your imagination can picture; and could you surrender your
being to my hands, I should be able to show myself as I really
am--supreme in loveliness and majesty!"

Unfortunately, the hairdresser's imagination was not his strongest
point. He could not dissociate the goddess from the marble shape she had
assumed, and that shape he was not sufficiently educated to admire; he
merely coughed now in a deferential manner.

"I perceive that I cannot move you," she said. "Men have grown strangely
stubborn and impervious. I leave you, then, to your obstinacy; only take
heed lest you provoke me at last to wrath, for my patience is well-nigh
at an end!"

And she was gone, and the bedizened statue stood there, staring hardly
at him with the eyes his own hand had given her.

"This has been the most trying evening I've had yet," he thought. "Thank
my stars, if all goes well, I shall get rid of her by this time
to-morrow!"

The next day passed uneventfully enough, though the unfortunate
Leander's apprehensions increased with every hour. As before, he closed
early, got his apprentice safely off the premises, and sat down to wait
in his saloon. He knew that the statue (which he had concealed during
the day behind a convenient curtain) would probably recover
consciousness for some part of the evening, as it had rarely failed to
do, and prudence urged him to keep an eye over the proceedings of his
tormentress.

To his horror, Aphrodite's first words, after awaking, expressed her
intention of repeating the search for homage and beauty, which had been
so unsuccessful the night before!

"Seek not to detain me, Leander," she said; "for, goddess as I am, I am
drooping under this persistent obduracy. Somewhere beyond this murky
labyrinth, it may be that I shall find a shrine where I am yet
honoured. I will go forth, and never rest till I have found it, and my
troubled spirits are revived by the incense for which I have languished
so long. I am weary of abasing myself to such a contemptuous mortal, nor
will I longer endure such indignity. Stand back, and open the gates for
me! Why do