When We Dead Awaken Part 32

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.