Simeon, and they are both cured."

"Can you restore me?" Hermon now asked in great excitement. "Answer me
honestly, you experienced woman! Give me back my sight, and demand
whatever gold and valuables I still possess--"

"Keep them," Tabus contemptuously interrupted. "Not for gold or goods
will I restore you the best gift man can lose. I will cure you because
you are the person to whom the infamous wretch most ardently wished the
sorest trouble. When she hoped to destroy you, she perceived in this deed
the happiness which had been promised to her on a night when the full
moon was shining. To-day--this very night--the disk between Astarte's
horns rounds again, and presently--wait a little while!--presently you
shall have what the light restores you--" Then she called the Biamite
woman, ordered her to bring the medicine chest, and took from it one
vessel after another. The box she was seeking was among the last and,
while handing it to Bias, she muttered: "Oh, yes, certainly--it does one
good to destroy a foe, but no less to make her foe happy!"

Turning to the freedman, she went on in a louder tone: "You, slave, shall
inform Hanno's wife that old Tabus gave the sculptor, whose blindness she
caused, the remedy which restored the sight of black Psoti, whom she
knew." Here she paused, gazed upward, and murmured almost unintelligibly:
"Satabus, Hanno! If this is the last act of the old mother, it will give
ye pleasure."

Then she told Hermon to kneel again, and ordered the slave to hold the
lamp which her nurse Tasia had just lighted at the hearth fire.

"The last," she said, looking into the box, "but it will be enough. The
odour of the herb in the salve is as strong as if it had been prepared
yesterday."

She laid the first bandage on Hermon's eyes with her own weak fingers, at
the same time muttering an incantation; but it did not seem to satisfy
her. Great excitement had taken possession of her, and as the silver
light of the full moon shone into her room she waved her hands before the
artist's eyes and fixed her gaze upon the threshold illumined by the
moonbeams, ejaculating sentences incomprehensible to the blind man. Bias
supported her, for she had risen to her full height, and he felt how she
tottered and trembled.

Yet her strength held out to whisper to Hermon: "Nearer, still nearer! By
the light of the august one whose rays greet us, let it be said: You will
see again. Await your recovery patiently in a qui