ell-earned possessions.

He felt as if he breathed the lighter, purer air of the realms of the
blessed, and the laurel crown which the Queen's envoy pressed upon his
brow, the wreaths which his fellow-artists presented to him by hands no
less distinguished than those of the great sculptor Protogenes, and
Nicias, the most admired artist after the death of Apelles, seemed, like
the wings on the hat and shoes of Hermes, messenger of the gods, to raise
him out of himself and into the air.

Darkness surrounded him, yet a bright dazzling light issued from his soul
and illuminated his whole being with the warm golden radiance of the sun.

Not even the faintest shadow dimmed it until Soteles, his fellow-student
at Rhodes, who sustained him with ardent earnestness in the struggle to
prefer truth to beauty, greeted him.

He welcomed him and wished that he might recover his lost sight as warmly
as his predecessors. He praised the Demeter, too, but added that this was
not the place to say what he missed in her. Yet that she did lack it
awakened in him an emotion of pain, for this, Hermon's last work,
apparently gave the followers of the ancients a right to number him in
their ranks.

His cautious expression of regret must refer to the head of his Demeter.
Yet surely it was not his fault that Daphne's features bore the impress
of that gentle, winning kindness which he himself and Soteles, imitating
him, had often condemned as weak and characterless.

The correctness of his belief was instantly proved to him by the address
of gray-haired, highly praised Euphranor, who spoke of the Demeter's
countenance with warm admiration. And how ardently the poets Theocritus
and Zenodotus extolled his work to the skies!

Amid so much laudation, one faint word of dissatisfaction vanished like a
drop of blood that falls into a clear stream.

The welcome concluded with a final chant by the chorus, and continued to
echo in Hermon's ears as he entered his uncle's chariot and drove away
with him, crowned with laurel and intoxicated as if by fiery wine.

Oh, if he could only have seen his fellow-citizens who so eagerly
expressed their good will, their sympathy, their admiration! But the
black and coloured mist before his eyes revealed no human figure, not
even that of the woman he loved, who, he now learned for the first time
from her father, had appeared among the priestesses of Demeter to greet
him.

Doubtless he was gladdened by the sound o