A blessed sense of rejoicing, such as he had not felt since his early youth, filled his heart, and Dorothea’s ardor seemed to him half pitiful and half amusing.

It was not till his duteous son took the hammer in his hand, that he stepped between his wife and the bust, saying kindly: 

“There will be time enough to-morrow to destroy the work.  Forget the model, my son, now that you have taken advantage of it so successfully.  I know of a better mistress for you—­Art—­to whom belongs everything of beauty that the Most High has created—­In Art in all its breadth and fulness, not fettered and narrowed by any Agapitus.”

Polykarp flung himself into his father’s arms, and the stern man, hardly master of his emotions, kissed the boy’s forehead, his eyes, and his cheeks.

CHAPTER XIV.

At noon of the following day the senator went to the women’s room, and while he was still on the threshold, he asked his wife—­who was busy at the loom: 

“Where is Polykarp?  I did not find him with Antonius, who is working at the placing of the altar, and I thought I might find him here.”

“After going to the church,” said Dorothea, “he went up the mountain.  Go down to the workshops, Marthana, and see if your brother has come back.”

Her daughter obeyed quickly and gladly, for her brother was to her the dearest, and seemed to her to be the best, of men.  As soon as the pair were alone together Petrus said, while he held out his hand to his wife with genial affection, “Well, mother—­shake hands.”  Dorothea paused for an instant, looking him in the face, as if to ask him, “Does your pride at last allow you to cease doing me an injustice?” It was a reproach, but in truth not a severe one, or her lips would hardly have trembled so tenderly, as she said.

“You cannot be angry with me any longer, and it is well that all should once more be as it ought.”

All certainly had not been “as it ought,” for since the husband and wife had met in Polykarp’s work-room, they had behaved to each other as if they were strangers.  In their bedroom, on the way to church, and at breakfast, they had spoken to each no more than was absolutely necessary, or than was requisite in order to conceal their difference from the servants and children.  Up to this time, an understanding had always subsisted between them that had never taken form in words, and yet that had scarcely in a single case been infringed, that neither should ever praise one of their children for anything that the other thought blameworthy, and vice versa.

But in this night, her husband had followed up her severest condemnation by passionately embracing the wrong-doer.  Never had she been so stern in any circumstances, while on the other hand her husband, so long as she could remember, had never been so softhearted and tender to his son, and yet she had controlled herself so far, as not to contradict Petrus in Polykarp’s presence, and to leave the work-room in silence with her husband.