When Amyntas, the head of the conspirators, attracted the attention of the company by malicious remarks about the King’s sister, the Thracian laid her hand on the blind artist’s arm, whispering:  “Has the image of the Arachne which, at Tennis, charmed you even in the presence of the angry Zeus, completely vanished from your memory?  How indifferent you look!  But I tell you”—­her deep blue eyes flashed as she spoke—­“that so long as you were still a genuine creating artist the case was different.  Even while putting the last touches of the file to the Demeter, for which Archias’s devout daughter posed as your model, another whom you could not banish from your mind filled your imagination.  Though so loud a denial is written on your face, I persist in my conviction, and that no idle delusion ensnares me I can prove!”

Hermon raised his sightless eyes to her inquiringly, but she went on with eager positiveness:  “Or, if you did not think of the weaver while carving the goddess, how did you happen to engrave a spider on the ribbon twined around the ears of grain in Demeter’s hand?  Not the smallest detail of a work produced by the hand of a valued friend escapes my notice, and I perceived it before the Demeter came to the temple and the lofty pedestal.  Now I would scarcely be able to discover it in the dusky cella, yet at that time I took pleasure in the sight of the ugly insect, not only because it is cleverly done, but because it reminded me of something”—­here she lowered her voice still more—­“that pleased me, though probably it would seem less flattering to the daughter of Archias, who perhaps is better suited to act as guide to the blind.  How bewildered you look!  Eternal gods!  Many things are forgotten after long months have passed, but it will be easy for me to sharpen your memory.  ’At the time Hermon had just finished the Demeter,’ the spider called to me, ’he scratched me on the gold.’  But at that very time—­yes, my handsome friend, I can reckon accurately—­you had met me, Althea, in Tennis, I had brought the spider-woman before your eyes.  Was it really nothing but foolish vanity that led me to the conviction that you were thinking of me also when you engraved on the ribbon the despised spider-for which, however, I always felt a certain regard—­with the delicate web beneath its slender legs?”

Hitherto Hermon had listened to every word in silence, labouring for breath.  He was transported as if by magic to the hour of his return from Pelusium; he saw himself enter Myrtilus’s studio and watch his friend scratch something, he did not know what, upon the ribbon which fastened the bunch of golden grain.  It was—­nay, it could have been nothing else—­that very spider.  The honoured work was not his, but his dead friend’s.  How the exchange had occurred he could not now understand, but to disbelieve that it had taken place would have been madness or self-deception.

Now he also understood the doubts of Soteles and the King.  Not he—­Myrtilus, and he alone, was the creator of the much-lauded Demeter!