draw it nearer,
and perhaps--surely and certainly, the Amalekite said--the time would
come when he would behold it also with his bodily eyes.

If the longing should be fulfilled! If his eyes were again permitted
to convey to him what formerly filled his soul with delight! Yes,
beauty--was entitled to a higher place than truth, and if it again
unfolded itself to his gaze, how gladly and gratefully he would pay
homage to it with his art!

The hope that he might enjoy it once more now grew stronger, for the
glimmer of light became brighter, and one day, when his skilful nurse
again took the bandage from his milk-white pupils, he saw something long
appear, as if through, a mist. It was only the thorny acacia tree at
his tent; but the sight of the most beautiful of beautiful things never
filled him with more joyful gratitude.

Then he ordered the less valuable of his two rings to be sold to offer a
sacrifice to health-bestowing Isis, who had a little temple in Clysma.

How fervently he now prayed also to the great Apollo, the foe of
darkness and the lord of everything light and pure! How yearningly he
besought Aphrodite to bless him again with the enjoyment of eternal
beauty, and Eros to heal the wound which his arrow had inflicted upon
his heart and Daphne's, and bring them together after so much distress
and need!

When, after the lapse of another week, the bandage was again removed,
his inmost soul rejoiced, for his eyes showed him the rippling
emerald-green surface of the Red Sea, and the outlines of the palms, the
tents, the Amalekite woman, her boy, and her two long-eared goats.

How ardently he thanked the gracious deities who, in spite of Straton's
precepts, were no mere figments of human imagination and, as if he
had become a child again, poured forth his overflowing heart with mute
gratitude to his mother's soul!

The artist nature, yearning to create, began to stir within more
ceaselessly than ever before. Already he saw clay and wax assuming forms
beneath his skilful hands; already he imagined himself, with fresh power
and delight, cutting majestic figures from blocks of marble, or, by
hammering, carving, and filing, shaping them from gold and ivory.

And he would not take what he intended to create solely from the world
of reality perceptible to the senses. Oh, no! He desired to show through
his art the loftiest of ideals. How could he still shrink from using the
liberty which he had formerly rejected,