urned face and, shivering,
drew his mantle closer round him.

Yet it seemed impossible to return to the cabin; the memory of Ledscha
imploring vengeance, and the stern image of the avenging goddess in the
cella of the little Temple of Nemesis, completely mastered him. In the
close cabin these terrible visions, united with the fear of having reaped
undeserved praise, would have crouched upon his breast like harpies and
stifled or driven him mad. After what had happened, to number the swift
granting of the insulted Biamite's prayer among the freaks of chance was
probably a more arbitrary and foolish proceeding than, with so many
others, to recognise the incomprehensible power of Nemesis. Ledscha had
loosed it against him and his health, perhaps even his life, and he
imagined that she was standing before him with the bridle and wheel,
threatening him afresh.

Shivering, as if chilled to the bone, overwhelmed by intense horror, he
turned his blinded eyes upward to the blackness above and raised his
hand, for the first time since he had joined the pupils of Straton in the
Museum, to pray. He besought Nemesis to be content, and not add to
blindness new tortures to augment the terrible ones which rent his soul,
and he did so with all the ardour of his passionate nature.

The steward Gras had received orders to wake the Lady Thyone if anything
unusual happened to the blind man, and when he heard the unfortunate
artist groan so pitifully that it would have moved a stone, and saw him
raise his hand despairingly to his head, he thought it was time to utter
words of consolation, and a short time after the anxious matron followed
him.

Her low exclamation startled Hermon. To be disturbed in the first prayer
after so long a time, in the midst of the cries of distress of a
despairing soul, is scarcely endurable, and the blind man imposed little
restraint upon himself when his old friend asked what had occurred, and
urged him not to expose himself longer to the damp night air.

At first he resolutely resisted, declaring that he should lose his senses
alone in the close cabin.

Then, in her cordial, simple way, she offered to bear him company in the
cabin. She could not sleep longer, at any rate; she must leave him early
in the morning, and they still had many things to confide to each other.

Touched by so much kindness, he yielded and, leaning on the Bithynian's
arm, followed her, not into his little cabin, but into the captain