In ancient times there lived in Cyprus a sculptor named Pygmalion. He had won for himself fame and wealth by his cunning as a worker in marble, and his carven images of gods and goddesses, of heroes and heroines, were to be seen in every temple of the island and in all the palaces of the great. Many an island maiden cast on him admiring eyes, and would beseech him to immortalize her features in marble when he was engaged in sculpturing a naiad for a public fountain, or an oread for the shrine of the Great Huntress. Yet, though rich and famous and admired of women, Pygmalion was sad and dissatisfied. The nobles applauded and feasted him, but regarded him as an artisan of low birth and would not admit him to their friendship. The fairest maidens of Crete seemed to him plain and common when he compared them with the godlike forms that his chisel had wrought, and, still more, with the perfect woman whom his imagination pictured but even his hand had not the skill to realize. So it chanced one day that, after wandering listlessly about the streets, watching the bales of Tyrian purple piled on the quays, and listening to the chaffering of the dark-eyed merchants, he hied him home heavy-hearted, and turned mechanically for relief to the daily work by which he earned his bread. He had begun rough-hewing a block of Parian marble, uncertain at starting what he should make of it; but as he worked on, the veins in the marble suggested to him a woman's form, and in careless mood he exclaimed, "Grant, Lady Venus, that this statue may be a fulfilment of my dream, an express image, a reflection on earth of thy celestial beauty. Only grant my prayer and I vow that the maid shall be dedicated to thee, and serve thee in thy myrtle grove." So he prayed carelessly, but the goddess was by and heard his prayer, and so guided his hand that he wrought more surely and deftly than he had ever wrought before. As the white chips flew beneath his touch, a strange joy thrilled his heart, and withal, a dim sense of trouble, as though he were pursuing his own shadow, a phantom of his brain that still eluded his grasp. So he worked on hour after hour through the day, and all night he dreamt of his work. So absorbed was he that for a whole month he forgot his morning plunge in the river, forgot his stroll through the woods at sunset, forgot even to water the flowers in his garden close. And yet, so exquisitely delicate were the added touches and the smoothing of the marble, that you could have covered with a penny-piece all that had fallen in the month from his chisel. And still he seemed no nearer to his goal; so one morning, after a restless night, he arose and said to himself, "Pygmalion, thou art mad; some witch hath laid her spell upon thee. Rouse thyself while it is yet time; break the wicked spell; live as thou didst before, and seek not to attain that perfect beauty that is laid up in the heavens beyond mortal ken."