PROFESSOR RUBEK.
And you can say that--you who threw yourself into my work with such saint-like pa.s.sion and such ardent joy?--that work for which we two met together every morning, as for an act of worship.
IRENE.
[Coldly, as before.] I will tell you one thing, Arnold.
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
Well?
IRENE.
I never loved your art, before I met you.--Nor after either.
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
But the artist, Irene?
IRENE.
The artist I hate.
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
The artist in me too?
IRENE.
In you most of all. When I unclothed myself and stood for you, then I hated you, Arnold--
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
[Warmly.] That you did not, Irene! That is not true!
IRENE.
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 ma.s.ses--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.