an to himself."

"Why should he?" asked Hermon, as if he, too, was perfectly sure of his
friend. "We have shared many a bit of bread together. When we determined
upon this competition each knew the other's ability. Your father
commissioned us to create peaceful Demeter, the patroness of agriculture,
peace, marriage, and Arachne, the mortal who was the most skilful of
spinners; for he is both a grain dealer and owner of spinning factories.
The best Demeter is to be placed in the Alexandrian temple of the
goddess, to whose priestesses you belong; the less successful one in your
own house in the city, but whose Demeter is destined for the sanctuary, I
repeat, is now virtually decided. Myrtilus will add this prize to the
others, and grant me with all his heart the one for the Arachne. The
subject, at any rate, is better adapted to my art than to his, and so I
should be tolerably certain of my cause. Yet my anxiety about the verdict
of the judges remains, for surely you know how much the majority are
opposed to my tendency. I, and the few Alexandrians who, following me,
sacrifice beauty to truth, swim against the stream which bears you,
Myrtilus, and those who are on your side, smoothly along. I know that you
do it from thorough conviction, but with other acknowledged great artists
and our judges, you, too, demand beauty--always beauty. Am I right, or
wrong? Is not any one who refuses to follow in the footsteps left by the
ancients of Athens as certain of condemnation as the convicted thief or
murderer? But I will not follow the lead of the Athenians, inimitably
great though they are in their own way, because I would fain be more than
the ancients of Ilissus: a disciple and an Alexandrian."

"The never-ending dispute," Myrtilus answered his fellow-artist, with a
cordiality in which, nevertheless, there was a slight accent of pity.

"Surely you know it, Daphne. To me the ideal and its embodiment within
the limits of the natural, according to the models of Phidias,
Polycletus, and Myron is the highest goal, but he and his co-workers seek
objects nearer at hand."

"Or rather we found them," cried Hermon, interrupting his companion with
angry positiveness. "The city of Alexandria, which is growing with
unprecedented vigour, is their home. There, the place to which every race
on earth sends a representative, the pulse of the whole world is
throbbing. There, whoever does not run with the rest is run over; there,
but one thing i