t have dinted her, made a dimple in
a wrong place. I dared not risk it. It became all the more necessary to
speak.

The first thing I thought of was a quotation from Edgar Allan Poe.

"I pacified Psyche and kissed her," I murmured, "and tempted her out of
the gloom."

I said the lines in what I am convinced is the proper way, as if they
were forced from me, as if I spoke them to myself and did not mean them
to be heard. I do not think Mrs. Ascher knew them. I fear she suspected
me of making some sort of joke. I hastened to redeem my character.

"Psyche," I said, "the soul."

I was right so far. Psyche is the Greek for the soul. I ventured
further.

"The human soul, the artistic soul."

Mrs. Ascher appeared to be absolutely hanging on my words. I plunged on.

"Aspiring," I said, "reaching after the unattainable."

I would not have said, "hoping for a yawn" for anything that could have
been offered me; but the young woman who stood for Mrs. Ascher's Psyche
must have longed for that relief. The attitude in which she was posed
suggested yawning all the time, and we all know how fatal it is to think
of a yawn.

"Quite unfinished," said Mrs. Ascher with a sigh.

"The fault of New York," I said. "When you get home again----"

I hesitated. I did not wish to commit myself to a confession of
ignorance, and I do not know whether a damp, soft Psyche can be packed
up and transported across the Atlantic to be finished in London.

"But the aspiration is there," I said, "and you owe that to New York.
The air, the very same air which forbids completion, is charged with
aspiration. We all feel it. The city itself aspires. Since the great
days when men set out to build a tower the top of which should reach
unto heaven, there has never been such aspiration anywhere in the world.
Look at the Woolworth Building."

I was maundering and I knew it Mrs. Ascher's statuette was very nice
and graceful; a much better thing than I expected to see, but there was
nothing in it, nothing at all in the way of thought or emotion. There
must be hundreds of people who can turn out clay girls just as good
as that Psyche. Somehow I had expected something different from Mrs.
Ascher, less skill in modelling, less care, but more temperament.

"There's nothing else worth showing," she said, "except perhaps this.
Yes, except this."

She unwrapped more bandages. A damp, pale-grey head appeared. It was
standing in a large saucer or soup plate. At