"Then my work may, at any rate, hope for a short agony and speedy death," sighed Pollux. "And it is true—all that lives comes into the world with its end already preordained."
"Would an early demise of your work pain you much?" asked Balbilla.
"Yes, if I thought it successful; not if I felt it to be a failure."
"Any one who keeps a bad bust," said Balbilla, "must feel fearful lest an undeservedly bad reputation is handed down to future generations."
"Certainly! but how then can you find courage to expose yourself for the sixth time to a form of calumny that it is difficult to counteract?"
"Because I can have anything destroyed that I choose," laughed the spoilt girl. "Otherwise sitting still is not much to my taste."
"That is very true," sighed Claudia. "But from you I expect something strikingly good."
"Thank you," said Pollux, "and I will take the utmost pains to complete something that may correspond to my own expectations of what a marble portrait ought to be, that deserves to be preserved to posterity."
"And those expectations require—?"
Pollux considered for a moment, and then he replied: