pleasure, and blindness would put an end to creating anything of his own.

The more vividly he recalled to memory his own work and his friend's,
the more probable appeared his disquieting supposition.

He also saw Myrtilus's figure before him, and in imagination heard his
friend again promise that, with the Arachne, he would wrest the prize
even from him.

During the terrible events of the last hours he had thought but seldom
and briefly of the weaver, whom it had seemed a rare piece of good
fortune to be permitted to represent. Now the remembrance of her took
possession of his soul with fresh power.

The image of Arachne illumined by the lamplight, which Althea had showed
him, appeared like worthless jugglery, and he soon drove it back into the
darkness which surrounded him. Ledscha's figure, however, rose before
him all the more radiantly. The desire to possess her had flown to the
four winds; but he thought he had never before beheld anything more
peculiar, more powerful, or better worth modelling than the Biamite
girl as he saw her in the Temple of Nemesis, with uplifted hand, invoking
the vengeance of the goddess upon him, and there--he discovered it now--
Daphne was not at all mistaken. Images never presented themselves as
distinctly to those who could see as to the blind man in his darkness.
If he was ever permitted to receive his sight, what a statue of the
avenging goddess he could create from this greatest event in the history
of his vision!

After this work--of that he was sure--he would no longer need the
borrowed fame which, moreover, he rejected with honest indignation.