during which all lovely forms, and colours, and sounds seemed to
use my brain as a common hall, where they could come and go,
unbidden and unexcused. I had never imagined that such capacity
for simple happiness lay in me, as was now awakened by this
assembly of forms and spiritual sensations, which yet were far
too vague to admit of being translated into any shape common to
my own and another mind. I had lain for an hour, I should
suppose, though it may have been far longer, when, the harmonious
tumult in my mind having somewhat relaxed, I became aware that my
eyes were fixed on a strange, time-worn bas-relief on the rock
opposite to me. This, after some pondering, I concluded to
represent Pygmalion, as he awaited the quickening of his statue.
The sculptor sat more rigid than the figure to which his eyes
were turned. That seemed about to step from its pedestal and
embrace the man, who waited rather than expected.

"A lovely story," I said to myself. "This cave, now, with the
bushes cut away from the entrance to let the light in, might be
such a place as he would choose, withdrawn from the notice of
men, to set up his block of marble, and mould into a visible body
the thought already clothed with form in the unseen hall of the
sculptor's brain. And, indeed, if I mistake not," I said,
starting up, as a sudden ray of light arrived at that moment
through a crevice in the roof, and lighted up a small portion of
the rock, bare of vegetation, "this very rock is marble, white
enough and delicate enough for any statue, even if destined to
become an ideal woman in the arms of the sculptor."

I took my knife and removed the moss from a part of the block on
which I had been lying; when, to my surprise, I found it more