erficially
touched by its beauty, he might have shrunk from wounding the unfortunate
artist by censure, and remained silent; but only something grand,
consummate, could lead him to such warmth of recognition.

She now felt it a misfortune that she and Thyone had hitherto been
prevented, by anxiety for their patient, from admiring his work. Had it
still been light, she would have gone to the temple of Demeter at once;
but the sun had just set, and Proclus was obliged to beg her to have
patience.

As the cases were standing finished at the cabinetmaker's, the statue had
been packed immediately, under his own direction, and carried on board
his ship, which would convey it with him to the capital the next day.

While this arrangement called forth loud expressions of regret from
Daphne and the vivacious matron, Hermon assented to it, for it would at
least secure the ladies, until their arrival in Alexandria, from a
painful disappointment.

"Rather," Proclus protested with firm dissent, "it will rob you for some
time of a great pleasure, and you, noble daughter of Archias, probably of
the deepest emotion of gratitude with which the favour of the immortals
has hitherto rendered you happy; yet the master who created this genuine
goddess owes the best part of it to your own face."

"He told me himself that he thought of me while at work," Daphne
admitted, and a flood of the warmest love reached Hermon's ears in her
agitated tones, while, greatly perplexed, he wondered with increasing
anxiety whether the stern critic Proclus had really been serious in the
extravagant eulogium, so alien to his reputation in the city.

Myrtilus, too, had admired the head of his Demeter, and--this he himself
might admit--he had succeeded in it, and yet ought not the figure, with
its too pronounced inclination forward, which, it is true, corresponded
with Daphne's usual bearing, and the somewhat angular bend of the arms,
have induced this keen-sighted connoisseur to moderate the exalted strain
of his praise? Or was the whole really so admirable that it would have
seemed petty to find fault with the less successful details? At any rate,
Proclus's eulogy ought to give him twofold pleasure, because his art had
formerly repelled him, and Hermon tried to let it produce this effect
upon him. But it would not do; he was continually overpowered by the
feeling that under the enthusiastic homage of the intriguing Queen
Arsinoe's favourite lurked a sting