CHAPTER XXXI. AT MASSA
Billy Traynor sat, deeply sunk in study, in the old recess of the palace library. A passage in the “Antigone” had puzzled him, and the table was littered with critics and commentators, while manuscript notes, scrawled in the most rude hand, lay on every side. He did not perceive, in his intense preoccupation, that Massy had entered and taken the place directly in front of him. There the youth sat gazing steadfastly at the patient and studious features before him. It was only when Traynor, mastering the difficulty that had so long opposed him, broke out into an enthusiastic declamation of the text that Massy, unable to control the impulse, laughed aloud.
“How long are you there? I never noticed you comin' in,” said Billy, half-shamed at his detected ardor.
“But a short time; I was wondering at—ay, Billy, and was envying, too—the concentrated power in which you address yourself to your task. It is the real secret of all success, and somehow it is a frame of mind I cannot achieve.”
“How is the boy Bacchus goin' on?” asked Billy, eagerly.
“I broke him up yesterday, and it is like a weight off my heart that his curly bullet head and sensual lips are not waiting for me as I enter the studio.”
“And the Cleopatra?” asked Traynor, still more anxiously.
“Smashed,—destroyed. Shall I own to you, Billy, I see at last myself what you have so often hinted to me,—I have no genius for the work?”
“I never said,—I never thought so,” cried the other; “I only insisted that nothing was to be done without labor,—hard, unflinching labor; that easy successes were poor triumphs, and bore no results.”