upon the good will of the judges!"

"Why not?" the girl interrupted. "My father is just, the king is an
incorruptible connoisseur, and certainly yesterday evening you, too,
believed the others to be honest men; as for your fellow-candidate
Myrtilus, he will no more grudge a prize to you than to himself."

"Why should he?" asked Hermon, as if he, too, was perfectly sure of his
friend. "We have shared many a bit of bread together. When we
determined upon this competition each knew the other's ability. Your
father commissioned us to create peaceful Demeter, the patroness of
agriculture, peace, marriage, and Arachne, the mortal who was the most
skilful of spinners; for he is both a grain dealer and owner of spinning
factories. The best Demeter is to be placed in the Alexandrian temple of
the goddess, to whose priestesses you belong; the less successful one in
your own house in the city, but whose Demeter is destined for the
sanctuary, I repeat, is now virtually decided. Myrtilus will add this
prize to the others, and grant me with all his heart the one for the
Arachne. The subject, at any rate, is better adapted to my art than to
his, and so I should be tolerably certain of my cause. Yet my anxiety
about the verdict of the judges remains, for surely you know how much the
majority are opposed to my tendency. I, and the few Alexandrians who,
following me, sacrifice beauty to truth, swim against the stream which
bears you, Myrtilus, and those who are on your side, smoothly along. I
know that you do it from thorough conviction, but with other acknowledged
great artists and our judges, you, too, demand beauty--always beauty. Am
I right, or wrong? Is not any one who refuses to follow in the footsteps
left by the ancients of Athens as certain of condemnation as the
convicted thief or murderer? But I will not follow the lead of the
Athenians, inimitably great though they are in their own way, because I