ce to you and your art?"

Then she interrupted herself to ask Myrtilus's opinion, but as he had
gone away coughing, she continued, in a softer tone: "How anxious you
can make one, Hermon! Has anything really happened which clouds your
pleasure in creating, and your hope of success?"

"Let us wait," he answered, hastily throwing back his head, with its
thick, waving raven locks. "If, in leaping over the ditch, I should fall
into the marsh, I must endure it, if thereby I can only reach the shore
where my roses bloom!"

"Then you fear that you have failed in the Demeter?" asked Daphne.

"Failed?" repeated the other. "That seems too strong. Only the work is
not proving as good as I originally expected. For the head we both used
a model--you will see--whose fitness could not be surpassed. But the
body! Myrtilus knows how earnestly I laboured, and, without looking to
the right or the left, devoted all my powers to the task of creation.
True, the models did not remain. But even had a magic spell doubled my
ability, the toil would still have been futile. The error is there; yet
I am repairing it. To be sure, many things must aid me in doing so, for
which I now hope; who knows whether it will not again be in vain? You
are acquainted with my past life. It has never yet granted me any great,
complete success, and if I was occasionally permitted to pluck a flower,
my hands were pricked by thorns and nettles!"

He pursed up his lips as if to hiss the unfriendly fate, and Daphne felt
that he, whose career she had watched from childhood with the interest
of affection, and to whom, though she did not confess it even to
herself, she had clung for years with far more than sisterly love,
needed a kind word.

Her heart ached, and it was difficult for her to assume the cheerful
tone which she desired to use; but she succeeded, and her voice sounded
gay and careless enough as she exclaimed to the by no means happy artist
and Myrtilus, who was just returning: "Give up your foolish opposition,
you obstinate men, and let me see what you have accomplished during this
long time. You promised my father that you would show your work to no
one before him, but believe my words, if he were here he would give
you back the pledge and lead me himself to the last production of your
study. Compassion would compel you disobliging fellows to yield, if you
could only imagine how curiosity tortures us women. We can conquer it
where more indifferent matte