ia, with all that springs from it, all that is
moving, creating, and thriving with such marvellous freedom, naturalness,
and variety within it, it is not alone the beauty that pleases the eye
which delights me; I value more the sound natural growth, the genuine,
abundant life. To truth, Daphne, as I mean it."

He raised his goblet as he spoke and drank to her.

She willingly pledged him, but, after removing her lips from the cup, she
eagerly exclaimed: "Show it to us, with the mind which animates it, in
perfect form, and I should not know wherein it was to be distinguished
from the beauty which hitherto has been our highest goal."

Here the helmsman's loud shout, "The light of Pelusium!" interrupted the
conversation. The bright glare from the lighthouse of this city was
really piercing the misty night air, which for some time had again
concealed the moon.

There was no further connected conversation, for the sea was now rising
and falling in broad, leaden, almost imperceptible waves. The comfort of
most of Philippus's guests was destroyed, and the ladies uttered a sigh
of relief when they had descended from the lofty galley and the boats
that conveyed them ashore, and their feet once more pressed the solid
land. The party of travellers went to the commandant's magnificent palace
to rest, and Hermon also retired to his room, but sleep fled from his
couch.

No one on earth was nearer to his heart and mind than Daphne, and it
often seemed as if her kind, loyal, yet firm look was resting upon him;
but the memory of Ledscha also constantly forced itself upon his mind and
stirred his blood. When he thought of the menacing fire of her dark eyes,
she seemed to him as terrible as one of the unlovely creatures born of
Night, the Erinyes, Apate, and Eris.

Then he could not help recalling their meetings in the grove of Astarte,
her self-forgetting, passionate tenderness, and the wonderfully delicate
beauty of her foreign type. True, she had never laughed in his presence;
but what a peculiar charm there was in her smile! Had he really lost her
entirely and forever? Would it not yet be possible to obtain her
forgiveness and persuade her to pose as the model of his Arachne?

During the voyage to Pelusium he had caught Althea's eye again and again,
and rejected as an insult her demand to give her his whole love. The
success of the Arachne depended upon Ledscha, and on her alone. He had
nothing good to expect from the Demeter, a