“You must tell him the truth,” said the white-haired man, whose countenance was so strangely transfigured, “you must deny nothing to one who is consumed by the divine hunger for recognition. It is meet that the creator should be told that his work is good. It is the crown of his superhuman labours that they should receive the sanction of those for whom they have wrought.”
“You do not speak to me,” said the poet, in a voice that was rare and strange. “Is it, friend, that you are no longer——? No, I will not doubt one whom I love.”
“Speak,” said the old man in the voice of a raven. “The days of Achilles are now few. Speak, that the faithful may render that which he needs.”
Dodson felt his own silence to be destroying him.
“I will speak,” he said in terror and despair. “I—I am no scholar, old boy, as you know. I don’t understand Greek; I know hardly a word of Latin; but I’ll just say this——” The unhappy Dodson clenched his hands in desperation. “I’ll just say this—to my mind there is nothing—there is nothing in the whole of the world——”
The dying poet, whose eyes were sightless, quivered like a stricken bird.
“Courage, Achilles!” he muttered faintly, pressing his frail hands to his heart. Then, stretching them forth, he turned his gaunt and grey face upon his friend. “Give to me those honest hands which I know to be trembling violently,” he said.
Dodson yielded his hands to those of the blind poet.
“How they tremble, how they tremble!” said the poet. “They have a rarer eloquence than your lips, my friend. Let them embrace me; let them embrace me.”
As the unhappy Dodson clasped the frail broken form in his strong arms, he seemed to learn quite suddenly why those once so lustrous eyes had the hard glare of stone.