to his face! ... he would speak! ... he would cry aloud his claims
in the presence of the King and demand instant justice! ... .

He strove for utterance,--his voice was gone! ... his lips were
moveless as the lips of a stone image! Stricken absolutely mute,
but with his sense of hearing quickened to an almost painful
acuteness, he stood erect and motionless,--rage and fear
contending in his heart, enduring the torture of a truly terrific
mystery of mind-despair, . . forced, in spite of himself, to listen
passively to the love-thoughts of his own dead Past revived anew
in his Rival's singing!




CHAPTER XVI.

THE PROPHET OF DOOM.


A few slow, dreadful minutes elapsed, . . and then,--then the first
sharpness of his strange mental agony subsided. The strained
tension of his nerves gave way, and a dull apathy of grief
inconsolable settled upon him. He felt himself to be a man
mysteriously accurst,--banished as it were out of life, and
stripped of all he had once held dear and valuable. HOW HAD IT
HAPPENED? Why was he set apart thus, solitary, poor, and empty of
all worth, WHILE ANOTHER REAPED THE FRUITS OF HIS GENIUS? ... He
heard the loud plaudits of the assembled court shaking the vast
hall as the Laureate ended his song--and, drooping his head, some