! To-morrow, when the deep
blue water was calm, he would greet the sea-god Glaucus, and when snowy
foam crowned the crests of the waves, white-armed Thetis. The wind was
no longer an empty sound to him; no, it, too, came from a deity. All
Nature had regained a new, divine life. Doubtless he felt much nearer to
his childhood than before, but he was infinitely less distant from the
eternal divinity. And all the forms, so full of meaning, which appeared
to him from Nature, and from every powerful emotion of his own soul,
were waiting to be represented by his art in the noblest of forms, those
of human beings. There were few with whose nature he had not become
familiar in the darkness and solitude that once surrounded him.

When he began to create again, he had only to summon them, and he
awaited, with the suspense of the general who is in command of new
troops on the eve of battle, the success of his own work after the great
transformation which had taken place in him.

What a stress and tumult!

He had controlled it since the first hour when he regained his full
vision. He would fain have transformed the moon into the sun, the ship
into the studio, and begun to model.

He knew, too, what he desired to create.

He would model an Apollo trampling under foot the slain dragon of
darkness.

He would succeed in this work now. And as he looked up and saw Selene
just emerging again from the black cloud island, the thought entered his
mind that it was a moonlight night like this when all the unspeakably
terrible misfortune occurred--which was now past.

Yet neither the calm wanderer above nor a resentful woman had exposed
him to the persecution of Nemesis. In the stillness of the desert he had
perceived what had brought all this terrible suffering upon him; but
he would not repeat it to himself now, for he felt within his soul the
power to remain faithful to his best self in the future.

With clear eyes he gazed keenly and blithely at the new life. Nothing,
least of all, futile self-torturing regret for faults committed, should
cloud the fair morning dawning anew for him, which summoned him to
active work, to gratitude and love.

Uttering a sigh of relief, he paced the deck--now brilliantly
illuminated by silvery light--with long strides.

The moon above his head reminded him of Ledscha. He was no longer angry
with her. The means by which she had intended to destroy him had been
transformed into a benefit, and while in