Here a slight cough interrupted the young artist, and the moist glitter of his blue eyes also betrayed that he was suffering from an attack of severe pain in his lungs; but Daphne nodded assent to him, and to Hermon also, and commanded the steward Gras to take the birds out of her sight.

“But,” said the Bithynian, “our mistress will doubtless allow us at least to take the hard lower part of the pelicans’ beaks, and the wing feathers of the flamingoes and birds of prey, to show our master on our return as trophies.”

“Trophies?” repeated the girl scornfully.  “Hermon, you are better than I and the rest of us, and I see that you are right.  Where game flies toward us in such quantities, hunting becomes almost murder.  And successes won by so slight an exertion offer little charm.  The second expedition before sunset, Gras, shall be given up.  The master of the hounds, with his men and the dogs, will return home on the transports this very day.  I am disgusted with sport here.  Birds of prey, and those only when brought down from the air, would probably be the right game in this place.”

“Those are the very ones to which I would grant life,” said Hermon, smiling, “because they enjoy it most.”

“Then we will at least save the sea eagle,” cried Daphne, and ordered the steward, who was already having the dead fowl carried off, to care for the wounded bird of prey; but when the latter struck furiously with his beak at the Biamite who attempted to remove it, Hermon again turned to the girl, saying:  “I thank you in the eagle’s name for your good will, you best of women; but I fear even the most careful nursing will not help this wounded creature, for the higher one seeks to soar, the more surely he goes to destruction if his power of flight is broken.  Mine, too, was seriously injured.”

“Here?” asked Daphne anxiously.  “At this time, which is of such great importance to you and your art?”

Then she interrupted herself to ask Myrtilus’s opinion, but as he had gone away coughing, she continued, in a softer tone:  “How anxious you can make one, Hermon!  Has anything really happened which clouds your pleasure in creating, and your hope of success?”

“Let us wait,” he answered, hastily throwing back his head, with its thick, waving raven locks.  “If, in leaping over the ditch, I should fall into the marsh, I must endure it, if thereby I can only reach the shore where my roses bloom!”

“Then you fear that you have failed in the Demeter?” asked Daphne.

“Failed?” repeated the other.  “That seems too strong.  Only the work is not proving as good as I originally expected.  For the head we both used a model—­you will see—­whose fitness could not be surpassed.  But the body!  Myrtilus knows how earnestly I laboured, and, without looking to the right or the left, devoted all my powers to the task of creation.  True, the models did not remain.  But even had a magic spell doubled my ability, the toil would still have been futile.  The error is there; yet I am repairing it.  To be sure, many things must aid me in doing so, for which I now hope; who knows whether it will not again be in vain?  You are acquainted with my past life.  It has never yet granted me any great, complete success, and if I was occasionally permitted to pluck a flower, my hands were pricked by thorns and nettles!”