d
it under the hoop and set to work to prize it off, with the result of
snapping both the points, and leaving the ring entirely unaffected. He
glanced at the face; it wore the same dreamy smile, with a touch of
gentle contempt in it. "She don't seem to mind," he said aloud; "to be
sure, she ain't inside of it now, as far as I make it out. I've got all
night before me to get the confounded thing off, and I'll go on till
I've done it!"

But he laboured on with the disabled scissors, and only succeeded in
scratching the smooth marble a little; he stopped to pant. "There's only
way," he told himself desperately; "a little diamond cement would make
it all right again; and you expect cracks in a statue."

Then, after a furtive glance around, he fetched the poker from the
fireplace. He felt horribly brutal, as if he were going to mutilate and
maltreat a creature that could feel; but he nerved himself to tap the
back of Aphrodite's hand at the dimpled base of the third finger. The
shock ran up to his elbow, and gave him acute "pins and needles," but
the stone hand was still intact. He struck again--this time with all his
force--and the poker flew from his grasp, and his arm dropped paralyzed
by his side.

He could scarcely lift it again for some minutes, and the warning made
him refrain from any further violence. "It's no good," he groaned. "If I
go on, I don't know what may happen to me. I must wait till she comes
to, and then ask her for the ring, very polite and civil, and try if I
can't get round her that way."

He was determined that he would never give her up to the gardens while
she wore his ring; but, in the mean time, he could scarcely leave the
statue standing in the middle of his sitting-room, where it would most
assuredly attract the charwoman's attention.

He had little cupboards on each side of his fireplace: one of these had
no shelves, and served for storing firewood and bottles of various
kinds. From this he removed the contents, and lifting the statue, which,
possibly because its substance had been affected in some subtle and
inexplicable manner by the vital principle that had so lately permeated
it, proved less ponderous than might have been reasonably expected, he
pushed it well into the recess, and turned the key on it.

Then he went trembling to bed, and, after an interval of muddled,
anxious thinking, fell into a heavy sleep, which lasted until far into
the morning.

He woke with the recollection