this reluctantly; but the Queen's attention to him and his art flattered
his vanity and, if he was to abandon the intoxicating and barren life of
pleasure, it could scarcely be done more worthily than at a festival
where the King's consort intended to distinguish him in person.

The banquet was to begin in a few hours, yet he could not let the day
pass without seeing Daphne and telling her the words of the oracle. He
longed, with ardent yearning, for the sound of her voice, and still more
to unburden his sorely troubled soul to her.

Oh, if only his Myrtilus still walked among the living! How totally
different, in spite of his lost vision, would his life have been!

Daphne was now the only one whom he could put in his place.

Since his return from the oracle, the fear that the rescued Demeter might
yet be the work of Myrtilus had again mastered him. However loudly
outward circumstances might oppose this, he now felt, with a certainty
which surprised him, that this work was not his own. The approval, as
well as the doubts, which it aroused in others strengthened his opinion,
although even now he could not succeed in bringing it into harmony with
the facts. How deep had been the intoxication in which he had so long
reeled from one day to the next, since it had succeeded in keeping every
doubt of the authorship of this work far from him!

Now he must obtain certainty, and Daphne could help him to it; for, as a
priestess of Demeter, she possessed the right to procure him access to
the cella and get permission for him to climb the lofty pedestal and feel
the statue with his fingers, whose sense of touch had become much keener.