“Listen to me!” Daphne interrupted with urgent warmth, and began to assail the artists with fresh entreaties.

For the second time black-bearded Hermon seemed inclined to give up his resistance, but Myrtilus cried in zealous refusal:  “For Hermon’s sake, I insist upon my denial.  The judges must not talk about the work until both tasks are completed, for then each of us will be as good as certain of a prize.  I myself believe that the one for Demeter will fall to me.”

“But Hermon will succeed better with the Arachne?” asked Daphne eagerly.

Myrtilus warmly assented, but Hermon exclaimed:  “If I could only rely 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 would fain be more than the ancients of Ilissus:  a disciple and an Alexandrian.”

“The never-ending dispute,” Myrtilus answered his fellow-artist, with a cordiality in which, nevertheless, there was a slight accent of pity.

“Surely you know it, Daphne.  To me the ideal and its embodiment within the limits of the natural, according to the models of Phidias, Polycletus, and Myron is the highest goal, but he and his co-workers seek objects nearer at hand.”