ly added: "You, who, by your art, could
transform mortal women into goddesses, wished to make me a humiliated
creature, with the rope which was to strangle her about her neck, and at
the same time the most repulsive of creeping insects. 'The hideous, gray,
eight-legged spider!' I exclaimed to myself, when I raised my arms and
saw my shadow on the sunlit ground. 'The spider!' I thought, when I shook
the distaff to draw threads from the flax in leisure hours. 'Your image!'
I said, when I saw spiders hanging in dusty corners, and catching flies
and gnats. All these things made me a horror to myself. And at the same
time to know that the Demeter, on whom you bestowed the features of the
daughter of Archias, was kindling the whole great city of Alexandria with
enthusiasm, and drawing countless worshippers to her sanctuary! She, an
object of adoration to thousands, I--the much-praised beauty--a horror to
myself! This is what fed my desire for vengeance with fresh food by day
and night; this urged me to remain with yonder wretch; for he had
promised, after pillaging the royal palaces, to shatter your Demeter, the
image of the daughter of Archias, which they lauded and which brought you
fame and honour--it was to be done before my eyes--into fragments."

"Mad woman!" Hermon again broke forth indignantly, and hastily told her
how she had been misinformed.

Ledscha's large black eyes dilated as if some hideous spectre was rising
from the ground before her, while she heard that the Demeter was the work
of Myrtilus and not his; that his friend's legacy had long since ceased
to belong to him, and that he was again as poor as when he was in Tennis
during the time of their love.

"And the blindness?" she asked sadly.

"It transformed life for me into one long night, illumined by no single
ray of light," was the reply; "but, the immortals be praised, I was cured
of it, and it was old Tabus, on the Owl's Nest at Tennis, whose wisdom
and magic arts you so often lauded, who gave the remedy and advice to
which I owe my recovery."

Here he hesitated, for Ledscha had seized the rope with one hand and the
stake at her right with the other, in order not to fall upon her knees;
but Hermon perceived how terribly his words agitated her, and spoke to
her soothingly. Ledscha did not seem to hear him, for while still
clinging to the rope she looked sometimes at the sand at her feet,
sometimes up to the full moon, which was now flooding both sky