“But he refused it,” added Myrtilus.  “I remember that day well, how I tried to persuade him, and, when he persisted in his intention, besought him to accept from my abundance what he needed.  But this, too, he resolutely refused, though at that time I was already so deeply in his debt that I could not repay him at all with paltry money.”

“You are thinking of the devotion with which he nursed you when you were so ill?” asked Daphne.

“Certainly; yet not of that alone,” was the reply.  “You do not know how he stood by me in the worst days.  Who was it that after my first great successes, when base envy clouded many an hour of my life, rejoiced with me as though he himself had won the laurel?  It was he, the ambitious artist, though recognition held even farther aloof from his creations than success.  And when, just at that time, the insidious disease attacked me more cruelly than ever, he devoted himself to me like a loving brother.  While formerly, in the overflowing joy of existence, he had revelled all day and caroused all night, how often he paused in the rush of gaiety to exchange the festal hall for a place beside my couch, frequently remaining there until Eos dyed the east, that he might hold my fevered hand and support my shaken frame!  Frequently too, when already garlanded for some gay banquet, he took the flowers from his head and devoted the night to his friend, that he might not leave him to the attendance of the slaves.  It is owing to him, and the care and skill of the great leech Erasistratus, that I am still standing before you alive and can praise what my Hermon was and proved himself to me in those days.  Yet I must also accuse him of a wrong; to this hour I bear him a grudge for having, in those sorrowful hours, refused to share my property with me fraternally.  What manly pride would have cheerfully permitted him to accept was opposed by the defiant desire to show me, your father, you, the whole world, that he would depend upon himself, and needed assistance neither from human beings nor even the gods.  In the same way, while working, he obstinately rejected my counsel and my help, though the Muse grants me some things which he unfortunately lacks.  Great as his talent is, firmly as I believe that he will yet succeed some day in creating something grand, nay, perhaps something mighty, the unbelieving disciple of Straton lacks the power of comprehending the august dignity, the superhuman majesty of the divine nature, and he does not succeed in representing the bewitching charm of woman, because he hates it as the bull hates a red rag.  Only once hitherto has he been successful, and that was with your bust.”

Daphne’s cheeks suddenly flamed with a burning flush, and feeling it she raised her feather fan to her eyes, and with forced indifference murmured:  “We were good friends from our earliest childhood.  And, besides, how small is the charm with which the artist who chooses me for a model has to deal!”