of the fair one, you make a portrait of clay to make love to, and you
will carry on idolatry before it, as once the Jews did before the golden
calf and the brazen serpent."

Polykarp submitted to his mother's angry blame in silence, but in painful
emotion. Dorothea had never before spoken to him thus, and to hear such
words from the very lips which were used to address him with such heart-
felt tenderness, gave him unspeakable pain. Hitherto she had always been
inclined to make excuses for his weaknesses and little faults, nay, the
zeal with which she had observed and pointed out his merits and
performances before strangers as well as before their own family, had
often seemed to him embarrassing. And now? She had indeed reason to
blame him, for Sirona was the wife of another, she had never even noticed
his admiration, and now, they all said, had committed a crime for the
sake of a stranger. It must seem both a mad and a sinful thing in the
eyes of men that he of all others should sacrifice the best he had--his
Art--and how little could Dorothea, who usually endeavored to understand
him, comprehend the overpowering impulse which had driven him to his
task.

He loved and honored his mother with his whole heart, and feeling that
she was doing herself an injustice by her false and low estimate of his
proceedings, he interrupted her eager discourse, raising his hands
imploringly to her.

"No, mother, no!" he exclaimed. "As truly as God is my helper, it is
not so. It is true that I have moulded this head, but not to keep it,
and commit the sin of worshipping it, but rather to free myself from the
image that stands before my mind's eye by day and by night, in the city
and in the desert, whose beauty distracts my mind when I think, and my