"You see," he said, "it is without a flaw. What sculptor could reproduce
it?"

The marble was white as snow, but in its depths the veins of the lily
were tinged with palest azure, and a faint flush lingered deep in its
heart.

"Don't ask me the reason of that," he smiled, noticing my wonder. "I have
no idea why the veins and heart are tinted, but they always are.
Yesterday I tried one of Genevieve's gold-fish,--there it is."

The fish looked as if sculptured in marble. But if you held it to the
light the stone was beautifully veined with a faint blue, and from
somewhere within came a rosy light like the tint which slumbers in an
opal. I looked into the basin. Once more it seemed filled with clearest
crystal.

"If I should touch it now?" I demanded.

"I don't know," he replied, "but you had better not try."

"There is one thing I'm curious about," I said, "and that is where the
ray of sunlight came from."

"It looked like a sunbeam true enough," he said. "I don't know, it always
comes when I immerse any living thing. Perhaps," he continued, smiling,
"perhaps it is the vital spark of the creature escaping to the source
from whence it came."