When, at parting, he was alone with him, he embraced him and said more
tenderly than usual: "You know how easy it will be for me to depart from
life; but it would be easier still if I could leave you behind without
anxiety, and that would happen if the hymeneal hymns at your marriage
to Daphne preceded the dirges which will soon resound above my coffin.
Yesterday I first became sure that she loves you, and, much good as you
have in your nature, you owe the best to her."

Hermon clasped him in his arms with passionate affection, and after
confessing that he, too, felt drawn with the utmost power toward Daphne,
and urging him to anticipate complete recovery instead of an early death,
he held out his hand to his friend; but Myrtilus clasped it a long time
in his own, saying earnestly: "Only this one frank warning: An Arachne
like the model which Althea presented yesterday evening would deal the
past of your art a blow in the face. No one at Rhodes--and this is just
what I prize in you--hated imitation more, yet what would using the
Arachne on the pedestal for a model be except showing the world not how
Hermon, but how Althea imagines the hapless transformed mortal? Even if
Ledscha withdraws from you, hold fast to her image. It will live on in
your soul. Recall it there, free it from whatever is superfluous, supply
whatever it lacks, animate it with the idea of the tireless artist, the
mocking, defiant mortal woman who ended her life as the weaver of weavers
in the insect world, as you have so often vividly described her to me.
Then, my dear fellow, you will remain loyal to yourself, and therefore
also to the higher truth, toward which every one of us who labours
earnestly strives, and, myself included, there is no one who wields
hammer and chisel in Greece who could contest the prize with you."