he stepped back from it, and leaned backwards from his hips, raising his
hands to the level of his temples, as if to narrow the field of vision;
then he went up to the model, and clutched the plastic mass of clay, as
though it were the flesh of his enemy.

He was now at work on the flowing hair of the figure before him, which
had already taken the outline of a female head, and he flung the bits of
clay, which he removed from the back of it, to the ground, as violently
as though he were casting them at an antagonist at his feet. Again his
finger-tips and modelling-tool were busy with the mouth, nose, cheeks,
and eyes, and his own eyes took a softer expression, which gradually grew
to be a gaze of ecstatic delight, as the features he was moulding began
to agree more and more with the image, which at this time excluded every
other from his imagination.

At last, with glowing cheeks, he had finished rounding the soft form of
the shoulders, and drew back once more to contemplate the effect of the
completed work; a cold shiver seized him, and he felt himself impelled
to lift it up, and dash it to the ground with all his force. But he soon
mastered this stormy excitement, he pushed his hand through his hair
again and again, and posted himself, with a melancholy smile and with
folded hands, in front of his creation; sunk deeper and deeper in his
contemplation of it, he did not observe that the door behind him was
opened, although the flame of his lamps flickered in the draught, and
that his mother had entered the work-room, and by no means endeavored to
approach him unheard, or to surprise him. In her anxiety for her
darling, who had gone through so many bitter experiences during the past
day, she had not been able to sleep. Polykarp's room lay above her
bedroom, and when his steps over head betrayed that, though it was now
near morning, he had not yet gone to rest, she had risen from her bed