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would talk..."

Their first argument was long and bitter. Pygmalion won, because he had the key to the door and was not about to relinquish it, but there was little conversation afterward. At the first opportunity, Galatea prevailed on Ganymede to cut her hair shorter, like a boy's, and left quietly while Pygmalion was asleep, wearing one of his tunics and his second-best sandals.

Pygmalion searched the town frantically for two days, and finally found her at the market place, where she was bargaining for powdered bone, mercury, and other strange goods. She was a rather convincing boy, but he knew her immediately. A master always knows the work of his hands.

"Come home, my love," he urged. "I need you!"

"I cannot. I have work with Gerygmas the alchemist."

"What? What could you possibly do for him?"

"I am very useful. He said I am the best apprentice he has ever had."

Pygmalion went home to drown himself in wave after wave of heart-broken mourning. He sent Ganymede to Gerygmas' house daily with flowers, fruit, poems, and desperate messages announcing his imminent demise if he was deprived of her love. All were returned, along with the borrowed clothes and sandals. Some weeks later, Ganymede brought back word the Galatea had left the great workshop of Gerygmas. Once again, Pygmalion embarked on a feverish search.

This time he found her in the courtyard of a large house, dressed in womanly attire. She had joined a group of women who had banded together to weave and spin and sew and sell their wares. "It turned out that Gerygmas has a strong taste for boys," she informed him. "He was most dismayed when he found out that I was not what he thought."

"Please come home. You are my inspiration. Without you, I cannot work - or live," he urged desperately.

"Oh, stop it! You are old enough to be my father, for heaven's sake!"

Pygmalion flinched. He had become very sensitive about his advancing age since his hair had begun to fall out. When he was creating his ideal love object, it had seemed perfectly natural to present her in the flush of early maidenhood. After all, the love of one's dreams is perpetually young.

"Come," he said again. "I will give you anything you wish."

"I wish to be left alone. And I think you would be much happier if you went back to your carving."

Pygmalion mooned about for several days more, composing poems and watching Galatea from afar. Then he picked up his hammer and chisel and began to work on a large piece of alabaster marble.

"My masterpiece," he proclaimed,

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