Yes, indeed they are--for the last two or three years--ever since you
finished your great group and got it out of the house---


PROFESSOR RUBEK.

All the same, they are no mere portrait-busts, I assure you.


MAIA.

What are they, then?


PROFESSOR RUBEK.

There is something equivocal, something cryptic, lurking in and behind
these busts--a secret something, that the people themselves cannot
see---


MAIA.

Indeed?


PROFESSOR RUBEK.

[Decisively.] I alone can see it. And it amuses me unspeakably.--On
the surface I give them the "striking likeness," as they call it, that