“They have been moving the local heavens, ever since the monument was placed, to have it set aside. I suppose they would have succeeded, too, if a large amount given to the city were not contingent on its preservation. But then they can always donate more money in the cause of their sacred respectability.” Linda had never, she exclaimed, heard of anything more disgusting. It was plain that Hesperia knew nothing of art. “Every one,” she ran on in the heat of her resentment, “every one, that is, who should decide, agrees it's magnificent. They were frightfully lucky to get it--Dodge's finest work.” She wrote at once to Pleydon commanding his presence and expressing her contempt of such depravity of opinion. To her surprise he was undisturbed, apparently, by the condemnation of his monument. He even laughed at her energy of scorn. She was hurt, perceptibly silenced, with a feeling of having been misunderstood or rather undervalued. Her disturbance at any blame attached to the statue of Simon Downige was extremely acute. But, she thought, if it failed to worry Dodge why should she bother. She did, in spite of this philosophy; Simon was tremendously important to her. He stood for things: she had watched his evolution from the clay sketch, and in Pleydon's mind, to the final heroic proportions; and she had taken for granted that a grateful world would see him in her light. A woman, she decided, had made the trouble; and she hated her with a personal vigor. Pleydon said: “I told you that old Simon was unbalanced; now you can see it by his reception in a successful city. The sculptor--do you remember him, a Beaux-Arts graduate?--admits that he had always opposed it, but that political motives overbore his pure protest. There is a scheme now to build a pavilion, for babies, and shut out the monument from open view. They may do that but time will sweep away their walls. If I had modeled Simon Downige, yes, he would go; but I modeled his vision, his aspiration--the hope of all men for release and purity. “Downige and the individual babies are unimportant compared to a vision of perfection, of escape. As long as men live, if they live, they'll reach up; and that gesture in itself is heaven. Not accomplishment. The spirit dragging the flesh higher; but spirit alone--empty balloons. A dream in bronze, harder even than men's heads, more durable than their prejudices, so permanent that it will wear out their ignorance; and in the end--always in the end--they'll bring their wreath. “A replica has gone to Cottarsport, from me; and you ought to see it there, on a block of New England granite. It's in the Common, a windswept reach with low houses and a white steeple and the sea. It might have been there from the beginning, rising on rock against the pale salt day. They can go to hell in Hesperia.”