“He told me himself that he thought of me while at work,” Daphne admitted, and a flood of the warmest love reached Hermon’s ears in her agitated tones, while, greatly perplexed, he wondered with increasing anxiety whether the stern critic Proclus had really been serious in the extravagant eulogium, so alien to his reputation in the city.

Myrtilus, too, had admired the head of his Demeter, and—­this he himself might admit—­he had succeeded in it, and yet ought not the figure, with its too pronounced inclination forward, which, it is true, corresponded with Daphne’s usual bearing, and the somewhat angular bend of the arms, have induced this keen-sighted connoisseur to moderate the exalted strain of his praise?  Or was the whole really so admirable that it would have seemed petty to find fault with the less successful details?  At any rate, Proclus’s eulogy ought to give him twofold pleasure, because his art had formerly repelled him, and Hermon tried to let it produce this effect upon him.  But it would not do; he was continually overpowered by the feeling that under the enthusiastic homage of the intriguing Queen Arsinoe’s favourite lurked a sting which he should some day feel.  Or could Proclus have been persuaded by Thyone and Daphne to help them reconcile the hapless blind man to his hard fate?

Hermon’s every movement betrayed the great anxiety which filled his mind, and it by no means escaped Proclus’s attention, but he attributed it to the blinded sculptor’s anguish in being prevented, after so great a success, from pursuing his art further.

Sincerely touched, he laid his slender hand on the sufferer’s muscular arm, saying:  “A more severe trial than yours, my young friend, can scarcely be imposed upon the artist who has just attained the highest goal, but three things warrant you to hope for recovery—­your vigorous youth, the skill of our Alexandrian leeches, and the favour of the immortal gods.  You shrug your shoulders?  Yet I insist that you have won this favour by your Demeter.  True, you owe it less to yourself than to yonder maiden.  What pleasure it affords one whom, like myself, taste and office bind to the arts, to perceive such a revolution in an artist’s course of creation, and trace it to its source!  I indulged myself in it and, if you will listen, I should like to show you the result.”

“Speak,” replied Hermon dully, bowing his head as if submitting to the inevitable, while Proclus began: 

“Hitherto your art imitated, not without success, what your eyes showed you, and if this was filled with the warm breath of life, your work succeeded.  All respect to your Boy Eating Figs, in whose presence you would feel the pleasure he himself enjoyed while consuming the sweet fruit.  Here, among the works of Egyptian antiquity, there is imminent danger of falling under the tyranny of the canon of proportions which can be expressed in figures, or merely even the demands of the style hallowed by thousands of years, but in a subject like the ‘Fig-eater’ such a reproach is not to be feared.  He speaks his own intelligible language, and whoever reproduces it without turning to the right or left has won, for he has created a work whose value every true friend of art, no matter to what school he belongs, prizes highly.