“If we should take them to civilization,” was Pete’s answer, “the Elgin marbles would become a joke.”

Billy spoke after a long silence.  “It’s been an experience that — if I were — oh, but what’s the use?  You can’t describe it.  The words haven’t been invented yet.  I don’t mean the fact that we’ve discovered members of a lost species — the missing link between bird and man.  I mean what’s happened since the capture.  It’s left marks on me.  I’ll bear them until I die.  If we abandoned this island — and them — and went back to the world, I could never be the same person.  If I woke up and found it was a dream, I could never be the same person.”

“I know,” Pete said, “I know.  I’ve changed, too.  We all have.  Old Frank is a god.  And Honey’s grown so that — .  Even Ralph’s a different man.  Changed — God, I should say I had.  It’s not only given me a new hold on things I thought I’d lost-morality, ethics, religion even — but it’s developed something I have no word for — the fourth dimension of religion, faith.”

“It’s their weakness, I think, and their dependence.”  Now it was less that Billy tried to translate Pete’s thought and more that he endeavored to follow his own.  “It puts it up to a man so.  And their beauty and purity and innocence and simplicity — .”  Billy seemed to be ransacking his vocabulary for abstract nouns.

“And that sense you have,” Pete broke in eagerly, “of molding a virgin mind.  It gives you a feeling of responsibility that’s fairly terrifying at times.  But there’s something else mixed up with it — the instinct of the artist.  It’s as though you were trying to paint a picture on human flesh.  You know that you’re going to produce beauty.”  Pete’s face shone with the look of creative genius.  “The production of beauty excuses any method, to my way of thinking.”  He spoke half to himself.  “God knows,” he added after a pause, “whatever I’ve done and been, I could never do or be again.  Sometimes a man knows when he’s reached the zenith of his spiritual development.  I’ve reached mine.  I think they’re beginning to trust us,” he added after another long interval, in which silently they contemplated the moving composition.  Pete’s tone had come back to its everyday accent.

“No question about it,” Billy rejoined.  “If I do say it as shouldn’t, I think my scheme was the right one — never to separate any one of them from the others, never to seem to try to get them alone, and in everything to be as gentle and kind and considerate as we could.”

“That look is still in their eyes,” Pete said.  He turned away from Billy and his face contracted.  “It goes through me like a knife — — .  When that’s gone — — .”

“It will go inevitably, Pete,” Billy reassured him cheerfully.  Suddenly his own voice lowered.  “One queer thing I’ve noticed.  I wonder if you’re affected that way.  I always feel as if they still had wings.  What I mean is this.  If I stand beside one of them with my eyes turned away I always get an impression that they’re still there, towering above my head — ghosts of wings.  Ever notice it?”