hat the blind man's marriage to Daphne was
only a question of time, and Proclus added that the easily excited nephew
would show himself more pliant than the uncle if Arsinoe exerted upon him
the irresistible charm of her personality.

When Hermon entered the residence of the grammateus in the palace, the
guests had already assembled. The Queen was not to appear until after the
feast, when the mixing jars were filled. The place by Hermon's side,
which Althea had chosen for herself, would then be given up to Arsinoe.

The sovereign was as unaccustomed to the society of a blind artist as
Hermon was to that of a queen, and both eagerly anticipated the
approaching meeting.

Yet it was difficult for Hermon to turn a bright face toward his
companion. The sources of anxiety and grief which had previously burdened
his mind would not vanish, even under the roof of the royal palace.

Althea's presence reminded him of Tennis, Ledscha, and Nemesis, who for
so long a time seemed to have suspended her persecution, but since he had
returned from the abode of the oracle was again asserting the old right
to him. During many a sleepless hour of the night he had once more heard
the rolling of her terrible wheel.

Even before the journey to the oasis of Amon, everything life could offer
him, the idle rake, in his perpetual darkness, had seemed shallow and
scarcely worth stretching out his hand for it.

True, an interesting conversation still had power to charm him, but often
during its continuance the full consciousness of his misfortune forced
itself upon his mind; for the majority of the subjects discussed by the
artists came to them through the medium of sight, and referred to new
creations of architecture, sculpture, and painting, from whose enjoyment
his blindness debarred him.

When returning home from a banquet, if his way lay through the city, he
was reminded of the superb buildings, marble terraces and fountains,
statues and porticoes, which had formerly satiated his eyes with delight,
and must now be illumined with a brilliant radiance by the morning
sunbeams, though a hostile fate shut them out from his eyes, starving and
thirsting for beautiful forms.

But it had seemed to him still harder to bear that his blinded eyes
refused to show him the most beautiful of all beautiful things, the human
form, when he lingered among the Ephebi or the spectators of a festal
procession, or visited the gymnasium, the theatre, the Aphrod