IRENE.

[Hides the knife.] I will listen as quietly as a mother can when she—–­

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Interrupting.] And you must not look at me while I am telling you.

IRENE.

[Moves to a stone behind his back.] I will sit here, behind you.—­ Now tell me.

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Takes his hands from before his eyes and gazes straight in front of him.  When I had found you, I knew at once how I should make use of you for my life-work.

IRENE.

“The Resurrection Day” you called your life-work.—­I call it “our child.”

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

I was young then—­with no knowledge of life.  The Resurrection, I thought, would be most beautifully and exquisitely figured as a young unsullied woman—­with none of our earth-life’s experiences—­awakening to light and glory without having to put away from her anything ugly and impure.

IRENE.

[Quickly.] Yes—­and so I stand there now, in our work?

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Hesitating.] Not absolutely and entirely so, Irene.

IRENE.

[In rising excitement.] Not absolutely—?  Do I not stand as I always stood for you?

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Without answering.] I learned worldly wisdom in the years that followed, Irene.  “The Resurrection Day” became in my mind’s eye something more and something—­something more complex.  The little round plinth on which your figure stood erect and solitary—­it no longer afforded room for all the imagery I now wanted to add—–­

IRENE.

[Groped for her knife, but desists.] What imagery did you add then?  Tell me!

PROFESSOR RUBEK.

I imagined that which I saw with my eyes around me in the world.  I had to include it—­I could not help it, Irene.  I expanded the plinth —­made it wide and spacious.  And on it I placed a segment of the curving, bursting earth.  And up from the fissures of the soil there now swarm men and women with dimly-suggested animal-faces.  Women and men—­as I knew them in real life.

IRENE.

[In breathless suspense.] But in the middle of the rout there stands the young woman radiant with the joy of light?—­Do I not stand so, Arnold?

PROFESSOR RUBEK.