Maragliano looked at him keenly again, nodded, and said nothing. Then he opened the portfolio and took out the first drawing. It was the design for the Cephalus and Aurora--the new and amended version. As the great sculptor's eye fell upon the group, he started and gave a little cry of suppressed astonishment. Then he looked once more at Colin, but said nothing. Colin trembled violently. Maragliano turned over the leaf, and came to the sketch for the bas-relief of the Boar of Calydon. Again he gave a little start, and murmured to himself, 'Corpo di Bacco!' but still said nothing to the tremulous aspirant. So he worked through the whole lot, examining each separate drawing carefully, and paying keener and keener attention to each as he recognised instinctively their profound merit. At last, he came to the group of Orestes and the Eumenides. It was Colin Churchill's finest drawing, and the marble group produced from it is even now one of the grandest works that ever came out of that marvellous studio. Maragliano gave a sharper and shorter little cry than ever. 'You made it?' he asked, turning to Colin. Colin nodded in deep suspense, not unmixed with a certain glorious premonition of assured triumph. Maragliano turned to the little group, that stood aloof around the clay of the Calabrian Peasant, and called out, 'Bazzoni!' 'Master!' 'See this design. It is the Englishman's. What think you of it?' The scholar took it up and looked at it narrowly. 'Good;' he said shortly, in an Italian crescendo; 'excellent--admirable--surprising--extraordinary.' Maragliano drew his finger over the curve of the Orestes' figure with a sort of free sweep, like a sculptor's fancy, and answered simply, turning to Colin, 'He says true. It is the touch of genius.' As Maragliano said those words, Colin felt the universe reeling wildly around him, and clutched at Sam's arm for support from falling. Sam didn't understand the Italian, but he saw from Colin's face that the tremor was excess of joy, not shock of disappointment. 'Well,' he said inquiringly to Maragliano. 'You like his drawings? You'll take him for a pupil? You'll make a sculptor of him?' 'No,' Maragliano answered in English, holding up the Orestes admiringly before him; 'I cannot do zat. Ze great God has done so already.' Sam smiled a smile of brotherly triumph. 'I thought so, Colin,' he said approvingly. 'I told him so last night, Mr. Maragliano. You see, I'm in the artistic business myself, though in another department--the advertising block trade--and I know artistic work when I look at it.' Maragliano showed his white teeth once more, but didn't answer. 'And what'll your terms be for taking him?' Sam asked, in as business-like a fashion as if the famous sculptor had been a flourishing greengrocer, or a respectable purveyor of kippered herrings.