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epub:type="z3998:persona">a handsome nymph with marked features, dark hair richly waved, and authoritative bearing. The Authoritative Nymph Swooping down to the centre of the glade with the sculptors, between Acis and the Newly Born. Do not try to browbeat me, Arjillax, merely because you are clever with your hands. Can you play the flute? Arjillax The bearded sculptor on her right. No, Ecrasia: I cannot. What has that to do with it? He is half derisive, half impatient, wholly resolved not to take her seriously in spite of her beauty and imposing tone. Ecrasia Well, have you ever hesitated to criticize our best flute players, and to declare whether their music is good or bad? Pray have I not the same right to criticize your busts, though I cannot make images anymore than you can play? Arjillax Any fool can play the flute, or play anything else, if he practises enough; but sculpture is a creative art, not a mere business of whistling into a pipe. The sculptor must have something of the god in him. From his hand comes a form which reflects a spirit. He does not make it to please you, nor even to please himself, but because he must. You must take what he gives you, or leave it if you are not worthy of it. Ecrasia Scornfully. Not worthy of it! Ho! May I not leave it because it is not worthy of me? Arjillax Of you! Hold your silly tongue, you conceited humbug. What do you know about it? Ecrasia I know what every person of culture knows: that the business of the artist is to create beauty. Until today your works have been full of beauty; and I have been the first to point that out. Arjillax Thank you for nothing. People have eyes, haven’t they, to see what is as plain as the sun in the heavens without your pointing it out? Ecrasia You were very glad to have it pointed out. You did not call me a conceited humbug then. You stifled me with caresses. You modelled me as the genius of art presiding over the infancy of your master here, indicating the other sculptor Martellus. Martellus A silent and meditative listener, shudders and shakes his head, but says nothing. Arjillax Quarrelsomely. I was taken in by your talk. Ecrasia I discovered your genius before anyone else did. Is that true, or is it not? Arjillax Everybody knew I was an extraordinary person. When I was born my beard was three feet long. Ecrasia Yes; and it has shrunk from three feet to two. Your genius seems to have been in the last foot of your beard; for you have lost both. Martellus With a short sardonic cachinnation. Ha! My beard was three and a half feet long when I was born; and a flash of lightning burnt it off and killed the ancient who was delivering me. Without a hair on my chin I became the greatest sculptor in ten generations. Ecrasia And yet you come to us today with empty hands. We shall actually have to crown Arjillax here because no other sculptor is exhibiting. Acis Returning from the temple steps to behind the curved seat on the right of the three. What’s the row, Ecrasia? Why have you fallen out with Arjillax? Ecrasia He has insulted us! outraged us! profaned his art! You know how much we hoped from the twelve busts he placed in the temple to be unveiled today. Well, go in and look at them. That is all I have to say. She sweeps to the curved seat, and sits down just where Acis is leaning over it. Acis I am no great judge of sculpture. Art is not my line. What is wrong with the busts? Ecrasia Wrong with them! Instead of being ideally beautiful nymphs and youths, they are horribly realistic studies of⁠—but I really cannot bring my lips to utter it. The Newly Born, full of curiosity, runs to the temple, and peeps in. Acis Oh, stow it, Ecrasia. Your lips are not so squeamish as all that. Studies of what? The Newly Born From the temple steps. Ancients. Acis Surprised but not scandalized. Ancients! Ecrasia Yes, ancients. The one subject that is by the universal consent of all connoisseurs absolutely excluded from the fine arts. To Arjillax. How can you defend such a proceeding? Arjillax If you come to that, what interest can you find in the statues of smirking nymphs and posturing youths you stick up all over the place? Ecrasia You did not ask that when your hand was still skilful enough to model them. Arjillax Skilful! You high-nosed idiot, I could turn such things out by the score with my eyes bandaged and one hand tied behind me. But what use would they be? They would bore me; and they would bore you if you had any sense. Go in and look at my busts. Look at them again and yet again until you receive the full impression of the intensity of mind that is stamped on them; and then go back to the pretty-pretty confectionery you call sculpture, and see whether you can endure its vapid emptiness. He mounts the altar impetuously. Listen to me, all of you; and do you, Ecrasia, be silent if you are capable of silence. Ecrasia Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn. Scorn! That is what I feel for your revolting busts. Arjillax Fool: the busts are only the beginning of a mighty design. Listen. Acis Go ahead, old sport. We are listening. Martellus stretches himself on the sward beside the altar. The Newly Born sits on the temple steps with her chin on her hands, ready to devour the first oration she has ever heard. The rest sit or stand at ease. Arjillax In the records which generations of children have rescued from the stupid neglect of the ancients, there has come down to us a fable which, like many fables, is not a thing that was