help
this wounded creature, for the higher one seeks to soar, the more surely
he goes to destruction if his power of flight is broken. Mine, too, was
seriously injured."

"Here?" asked Daphne anxiously. "At this time, which is of such great
importance to you and your art?"

Then she interrupted herself to ask Myrtilus's opinion, but as he had
gone away coughing, she continued, in a softer tone: "How anxious you can
make one, Hermon! Has anything really happened which clouds your pleasure
in creating, and your hope of success?"

"Let us wait," he answered, hastily throwing back his head, with its
thick, waving raven locks. "If, in leaping over the ditch, I should fall
into the marsh, I must endure it, if thereby I can only reach the shore
where my roses bloom!"

"Then you fear that you have failed in the Demeter?" asked Daphne.

"Failed?" repeated the other. "That seems too strong. Only the work is
not proving as good as I originally expected. For the head we both used a
model--you will see--whose fitness could not be surpassed. But the body!
Myrtilus knows how earnestly I laboured, and, without looking to the
right or the left, devoted all my powers to the task of creation. True,
the models did not remain. But even had a magic spell doubled my ability,
the toil would still have been futile. The error is there; yet I am
repairing it. To be sure, many things must aid me in doing so, for which
I now hope; who knows whether it will not again be in vain? You are
acquainted with my past life. It has never yet granted me any great,
complete success, and if I was occasionally permitted to pluck a flower,
my hands were pricked by thorns and nettles!"

He pursed up his lips as if to hiss the unfriendly fate, and Daphne felt
that he, whose career she had watched from childhood with the interest of
affection, and to whom, though she did not confess it even to herself,
she had clung for years with far more than sisterly love, needed a kind
word.

Her heart ached, and it was difficult for her to assume the cheerful tone
which she desired to use; but she succeeded, and her voice sounded gay
and careless enough as she exclaimed to the by no means happy artist and
Myrtilus, who was just returning: "Give up your foolish opposition, you
obstinate men, and let me see what you have accomplished during this long
time. You promised my father that you would show your work to no one
before him, but believe my words, if he were here he