"Listen," he exclaimed. "I had had two passions in my life--music, and the poetry of Richardière! No other poet has meant half--a tithe--so much to me as he. His work inspired me when I was a boy; if I had had the means, I would have taken the journey to Paris just to wait on the pavement and see his face when he went out. When he died----Of course all France mourned his loss, but none but his dearest friends, I think, could have felt as I did. Well, since I have been a man I have made an opera of his _Arizath_, and I came to Paris last week because there was a prospect of its being produced. Five minutes after I had found a room at an hotel, I was asking my way to the Square d'Iéna to see the statue to him. I knew nothing about it excepting that it had been erected there--and as I approached it my heart sank: I had always pictured a statue of the man, and I saw merely a bust of him--the statue was of a woman, recalling a verse." She nodded. "I know. Beauvais kept me posing for three hours and a half without budging, and I had a chilblain that itched like mad on the finger inside the book." "The disappointment was keen. I almost wished I had not come, for it had been a long walk, and I was very tired. And then, after I had stood looking at the bust, noting how handsome he had been, and thinking of his genius, I looked down at the statue of the woman, and I felt that it would have been worth coming simply to see that. It was so wonderful, so real! The naturalness of the attitude, the perfection of the toilette--I had never realised that the sculptor's art could do such things; I think I looked for minutes at the slippers. I admired the sleeves, the sweep of the gown, that seemed as if it must be soft to touch; I was amazed by a thousand trifles before my glance lingered on the face. And after my glance lingered on the face I saw nothing else; I could not even move to look at it in profile--it held me fixed." "It is Beauvais' masterpiece," said Gaby; "they all say it is the finest thing he has done."