“I scarcely know it myself,” said the youth. “I feel as though in a dream, and know not what is real and what fiction.”
“How have you passed your time? What were you doin' while I was away?”
“Dreaming, I believe,” said the other, with a sigh. “Some embers of my old ambition warmed up into a flame once more, and I fancied that there was that in me that by toil and labor might yet win upwards; and that, if so, this mere life of action would but bring repining and regret, and that I should feel as one who chose the meaner casket of fate, when both were within my reach.”
“So you were at work again in the studio?”
“I have been finishing the arm of the Faun in that pavilion outside the town.” A flush of crimson covered his face as he spoke, which Billy as quickly noticed, but misinterpreted.
“Ay, and they praised you, I 'll be bound. They said it was the work of one whose genius would place him with the great ones of art, and that he who could do this while scarcely more than a boy, might, in riper years, be the great name of his century. Did they not tell you so?”
“No; not that, not that,” said the other, slowly.
“Then they bade you go on, and strive and labor hard to develop into life the seeds of that glorious gift that was in you?”
“Nor that,” sighed the youth, heavily, while a faint spot of crimson burned on one cheek, and a feverish lustre lit up his eye.
“They did n't dispraise what you done, did they?” broke in Billy. “They could not, if they wanted to do it; but sure there's nobody would have the cruel heart to blight the ripenin' bud of genius,—to throw gloom over a spirit that has to struggle against its own misgivin's?”