The Fourteenth of February in Leap Year is a dread-letter day for the shrinking bachelor and the shy (wife-shy) grass widower.

The butterfly-winged statue of Femininity that, for three happy leapless years, he worshiped from a safe distance (at the foot of its pedestal), has come to life, has climbed down from its vestal perch, changed fearfully from cool quiet marble to something of the consistency of warm india rubber—from an adorable image to—the female of the species.

And with all the term implies. The butterfly wings of Psyche, iridescent, like rainbows reflected on mother-of-pearl, have shrivelled and blackened into the umbrella-ribbed wings of the vampire and the petalled lips from which could only be thought to issue the maidenly negative “yes” or the melting affirmative “no”—are twisted into little scarlet snakes that hiss, “Kisssss me my fool!”

“Look before she leaps!” is the Leap-Year slogan of the shrinking Bachelor, and it is a perfectly splendid motto, as mottoes go.

But a motto is like a cure for a cold which is only good to cure a cold that has not yet been caught, and the shrinking one is already as good as caught and his perfectly splendid slogan is of no more use than an icebox to an Esquimaux or a fur coat in Hell.

The Leap-Year Bachelor’s only hope is to feign death. Like the Bear in Æsop, the Female of the Species Human has no use for any but a “live one.”

If he flees he is lost—(or found, according to whether the speech be given to the male or the female actor of the scene,)—and if he be a grass widower, he is made hay while the sun shines.

Now whether Providence intended the instinct of flight for the preservation of the hunted one or as a stimulus to the hunter, will never be known. With wolves and tigers it works both ways, but with the leap-year “Vamp” it works pretty much only one way.

And so the gentle bachelor flees and is caught and is lived upon happily ever after?

To see a statue come to life must be a terrifying spectacle. Ovid’s tale of Pygmalion and Galatea is only for those who get their ideas about artists from magazines to the vacuity of whose contents the face of the girl on the cover may well serve as an index.

I am quite certain that when Pygmalion saw his perfect marble (perfect to him anyway) turn to imperfect flesh and blood, the completed result of months of hard work obliterated—undone—as if it had never been—and in its place “just a girl,” very sweet and lovely and all that—but compared to his statue—oh no!

And that is looking at it from its brightest “angle” (as the motion-picture intellectuals say). As a matter of fact, judging from the agonizing sensation of the human leg (or arm) when rudely awakened from dreamless slumber, the process of transmutation from senseless stone to pulsating flesh must be a very painful one indeed. However pleasing the countenance of the living Galatea might be under normal conditions its expression of mingled bewilderment, rage and physical anguish must have been disconcerting, not to say terrifying, to the sensitive soul of the sculptor, and anything but consoling for the loss of his hard-won and cherished handiwork.

I can picture Pygmalion fleeing madly from his studio, not even waiting for the elevator and vowing by all the gods, then administrating human affairs, never again to make a wish without touching wood or at least crossing his fingers.