unjust enough to do so. The degree of beauty Althea
possesses would entirely satisfy me for the Arachne. But when I imagine
a plastic work faithful to the model of yesterday evening--though I
have seen a great deal with my own eyes, and am always ready to defer to
riper judgment--I would think, while looking at it: This statue came to
the artist from the stage, but never from Nature. Such would be my view,
and I am not one of the initiated. But the adepts! The King, with his
thorough connoisseurship and fine taste, my father, and the other famous
judges, how much more keenly they would perceive and define it!"

Here she hesitated, for the blood had left Hermon's cheeks, and she saw
with surprise the deep impression which the candid expression of
her opinion had produced upon the artist, usually so independent and
disposed to contradiction. Her judgment had undoubtedly disturbed, nay,
perhaps convinced him; but at the same time his features revealed such
deep depression that, far from rejoicing in so rare a success, she
patted his arm like an affectionate sister, saying: "You have not yet
found time to realize calmly what yesterday dazzled us all--and you,"
she added in a lower tone, "the most strongly."

"But now," he murmured sadly, half to himself, half to, her, "my vision
is doubly clear. Close before the success of which I dreamed failure and
bitter disappointment."

"If this 'doubly' refers to your completed work, and also to the
Arachne," cried Daphne in the affectionate desire to soothe him, "a
pleasant surprise will perhaps soon await you, for Myrtilus judges your
Demeter much more favourably than you yourself do, and he also betrayed
to me whom it resembles."

She blushed slightly as she spoke, and, as her companion's gloomy face
brightened for a short time, went on eagerly: "And now for the Arachne.
You will and must succeed in what you so ardently strive to accomplish,
a subject so exactly adapted to your magnificent virile genius and so
strangely suited to the course which your art has once entered upon.
And you can not fail to secure the right model. You had not found it
in Althea, no, certainly not! O Hermon! if I could only make you see
clearly how ill suited she, in whom everything is false, is to you--your
art, your only too powerful strength, your aspiration after truth--"

"You hate her," he broke in here in a repellent tone; but Daphne dropped
her quiet composure, and her gray eyes, usually so ge