"And so," Mabel ended abruptly, "Kathleen wished for the boys
and the Lord Hermes fetched them and here we all are."
A burst of interested comment and question blossomed out round
the end of the story, suddenly broken off short by Mabel.
"But," said she, brushing it aside, as it grew thinner, "now we want
you to tell us."
"To tell you ?"
"How you come to be alive, and how you know about the ring and
everything you do know."
"Everything I know?" Phoebus laughed it was to him that she had
spoken and not his lips only but all the white lips curled in
laughter. "The span of your life, my earth-child, would not contain
the words I should speak, to tell you all I know."
"Well, about the ring anyhow, and how you come alive," said
Gerald; "you see, it's very puzzling to us."
"Tell them, Phoebus," said the dearest lady in the world; "don't
tease the children."
So Phoebus, leaning back against a heap of leopard- skins that
Dionysus had lavishly plucked from a spruce fir, told.
"All statues," he said, "can come alive when the moon shines, if
they so choose. But statues that are placed in ugly cities do not
choose. Why should they weary themselves with the contemplation
of the hideous?"
"Quite so," said Gerald politely, to fill the pause.
"In your beautiful temples," the Sun-god went on, "the images of
your priests and of your warriors who lie cross-legged on their
tombs come alive and walk in their marble about their temples,
and through the woods and fields.
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