The hope that he might enjoy it once more now grew stronger, for the glimmer of light became brighter, and one day, when his skilful nurse again took the bandage from his milk-white pupils, he saw something long appear, as if through, a mist.  It was only the thorny acacia tree at his tent; but the sight of the most beautiful of beautiful things never filled him with more joyful gratitude.

Then he ordered the less valuable of his two rings to be sold to offer a sacrifice to health-bestowing Isis, who had a little temple in Clysma.

How fervently he now prayed also to the great Apollo, the foe of darkness and the lord of everything light and pure!  How yearningly he besought Aphrodite to bless him again with the enjoyment of eternal beauty, and Eros to heal the wound which his arrow had inflicted upon his heart and Daphne’s, and bring them together after so much distress and need!

When, after the lapse of another week, the bandage was again removed, his inmost soul rejoiced, for his eyes showed him the rippling emerald-green surface of the Red Sea, and the outlines of the palms, the tents, the Amalekite woman, her boy, and her two long-eared goats.

How ardently he thanked the gracious deities who, in spite of Straton’s precepts, were no mere figments of human imagination and, as if he had become a child again, poured forth his overflowing heart with mute gratitude to his mother’s soul!

The artist nature, yearning to create, began to stir within more ceaselessly than ever before.  Already he saw clay and wax assuming forms beneath his skilful hands; already he imagined himself, with fresh power and delight, cutting majestic figures from blocks of marble, or, by hammering, carving, and filing, shaping them from gold and ivory.

And he would not take what he intended to create solely from the world of reality perceptible to the senses.  Oh, no!  He desired to show through his art the loftiest of ideals.  How could he still shrink from using the liberty which he had formerly rejected, the liberty of drawing from his own inner consciousness what he needed in order to bestow upon the ideal images he longed to create the grandeur, strength, and sublimity in which he beheld them rise before his purified soul!

Yet, with all this, he must remain faithful to truth, copy from Nature what he desired to represent.  Every finger, every lock of hair, must correspond with reality to the minutest detail, and yet the whole must be pervaded and penetrated, as the blood flows through the body, by the thought that filled his mind and soul.

A reflected image of the ideal and of his own mood, faithful to truth, free, and yet obedient to the demands of moderation—­in this sentence Hermon summed up the result of his solitary meditations upon art and works of art.  Since he had found the gods again, he perceived that the Muse had confided to him a sacerdotal office.  He intended to perform its duties, and not only attract and please the beholder’s eyes through his works, but elevate his heart and mind, as beauty, truth, grandeur, and eternity uplifted his own soul.  He recognised in the tireless creative power which keeps Nature ever new, fresh, and bewitching, the presence of the same deity whose rule manifested itself in the life of his own soul.