m, but the thought of returning to the close
cabin was unendurable. He fancied that his torturing thoughts would
stifle him in the gloom where even fresh air was denied him.

He allowed the careful Bithynian to throw a coverlet over him and draw
the hood of his cloak over his head, but his entreaties and warnings
were futile.

The steward's watchful nursing reminded Hermon of his own solicitude
for his friend and of his faithful slave Bias, both of whom he had lost.
Then he remembered the eulogy of the grammateus, and it brought up the
question whether Myrtilus would have agreed with him. Like Proclus, his
keen-sighted and honest friend had called Daphne the best model for the
kindly goddess. He, too, had given to his statue the features of the
daughter of Archias, and admitted that he had been less successful. But
the figure! Perhaps he, Hermon, in his perpetual dissatisfaction with
himself had condemned his own work too severely, but that it lacked the
proper harmony had escaped neither Myrtilus nor himself. Now he recalled
the whole creation to his remembrance, and its weaknesses forced
themselves upon him so strongly and objectionably that the extravagant
praise of the stern critic awakened fresh doubts in his mind.

Yet a man like the grammateus, who on the morrow or the day following it
would be obliged to repeat his opinion before the King and the judges,
certainly would not have allowed himself to be carried away by mere
compassion to so great a falsification of his judgment.

Or was he himself sharing the experience of many a fellow-artist? How
often the creator deceived himself concerning the value of his own work!
He had expected the greatest success from his Polyphemus hurling the
rock at Odysseus escaping in the boat, and a gigantic smith had posed
for a model. Yet the judges had condemned it in the severest manner as
a work far exceeding the bounds of moderation, and arousing positive
dislike. The clay figure had not been executed in stone or metal, and
crumbled away. The opposite would probably now happen with the Demeter.
Her bending attitude had seemed to him daring, nay, hazardous; but the
acute critic Proclus had perceived that it was in accord with one of
Daphne's habits, and therefore numbered it among the excellences of the
statue.

If the judges who awarded the prize agreed with the verdict of the
grammateus, he must accustom himself to value his own work higher,
perhaps even above that of My