The man and the god stood face to face, and the man who was about to lay
hands on the god was her lover. She watched his movements with
breathless interest; she longed to call out to him, to follow him as he
mounted the ladder, to fall on his neck and keep him from committing such
sacrilege--not out of fear of the ruin he might bring upon the world, but
only because she felt that the first blow he should deal to this
beautiful and unique work of art might wreck her love for him, as his
axe would wreck the ivory. She was not afraid for him; he seemed to her
inviolable and invulnerable; but her whole soul shuddered at the deed
which he was steeling himself to perpetrate. She remembered their happy
childhood together, his own artistic attempts, the admiration with which
he had gazed at the great works of the ancient sculptors--and it seemed
impossible that he, of all men he, should lay hands on that masterpiece,
that he, of all men, should be the one to insult, mutilate and ruin it.
It was not--could not be true!

But there he was, at the top of the ladder; he passed the axe from his
left hand to his right, and leaning back a little, looked at the head of
the god from one side. She could see his face plainly, and note every
movement and look; she watched him keenly, and saw the loving and
compassionate expression with which he fixed his gaze on the noble
features of Serapis, saw him clutch his left hand to his heart as if in
pain. The crowd below might fancy that he lacked courage, that he was
absorbed in prayer, or that his soul shrank from dealing the fateful blow
to the great divinity; but she could see that he was bidding a silent
farewell, as it were, to the sublime work of an inspired artist, which it
pained and shocked him to destroy. And this comforted her; it gave her
views of the situation a new direction, and suggested the question
whether he, a soldier and a Christian, when commanded by his superior to