ilus,
so rich in successes, needed no new garland. His lost sight would permit
him, Hermon, from reaping fresh laurels, and his friend would so gladly
bestow this one upon him. But he angrily closed his ears to these
enticements, and felt it a humiliation that they dared to approach him.

With proud self-reliance he threw back his head, saying to himself that,
though Myrtilus should permit him ten times over to deck him self with
his feathers, he would reject them. He would remain himself, and was
conscious of possessing powers which perhaps surpassed his friend's. He
was as well qualified to create a genuine work of art as the best
sculptor, only hitherto the Muse had denied him success in awakening
pleasure, and blindness would put an end to creating anything of his own.

The more vividly he recalled to memory his own work and his friend's, the
more probable appeared his disquieting supposition.

He also saw Myrtilus's figure before him, and in imagination heard his
friend again promise that, with the Arachne, he would wrest the prize
even from him.

During the terrible events of the last hours he had thought but seldom
and briefly of the weaver, whom it had seemed a rare piece of good
fortune to be permitted to represent. Now the remembrance of her took
possession of his soul with fresh power.

The image of Arachne illumined by the lamplight, which Althea had showed
him, appeared like worthless jugglery, and he soon drove it back into the
darkness which surrounded him. Ledscha's figure, however, rose before him
all the more radiantly. The desire to possess her had flown to the four
winds; but he thought he had never before beheld anything more peculiar,
more powerful, or better worth modelling than the Biamite girl as he saw
her in the Temple of Nemesis, with uplifted hand, invoking the vengeance
of the goddess upon him, and there--he discovered it now--Daphne was not
at all mistaken. Images never presented themselves as distinctly to those
who could see as to the blind man in his darkness. If he was ever
permitted to receive his sight, what a statue of the avenging goddess he
could create from this greatest event in the history of his vision!

After this work--of that he was sure--he would no longer need the
borrowed fame which, moreover, he rejected with honest indignation.

CHAPTER III.

It must be late, for Hermon felt the cool breeze, which in this region
rose between midnight and sunrise, on his b