ding, also seemed to her no mere
work of chance. The goddess on whom Hermon had bestowed the features of
her own face had deprived him of sight to confer upon her the happiness
of brightening and beautifying the darkness of his life.

If she saw aright, and it was only the fear of obtaining, with herself,
her wealth, that still kept him from her, the path which would finally
unite them must be found at last. She hoped to conquer also her father's
reluctance to give his only child in marriage to a blind man, especially
as Hermon's last work promised to give him the right to rank with the
best artists of his age.

The matron had listened to this confession with an agitated heart.
She had transported herself in imagination into the soul of the girl's
mother, and brought before her mind what objections the dead woman would
have made to her daughter's union with a man deprived of sight; but
Daphne had firmly insisted upon her wish, and supported it by many
a sensible and surprising answer. She was beyond childhood, and her
three-and-twenty years enabled her to realize the consequences which so
unusual a marriage threatened to entail.

As for Thyone herself, she was always disposed to look on the bright
side, and the thought that this vigorous young man, this artist crowned
with the highest success, must remain in darkness to the end of his
life, was utterly incompatible with her belief in the goodness of the
gods. But if Hermon was cured, a rare wealth of the greatest happiness
awaited him in the union with Daphne.

The mood in which she found the blind man had wounded and troubled her.
Now she renewed the bandage, saying: "How gladly I would continue to
use my old hands for you, but this will be the last time in a long while
that I am permitted to do this for the son of my Erigone; I must leave
you to-morrow."

Hermon clasped her hand closely, exclaiming with affectionate warmth:
"You must not go, Thyone! Stay here, even if it is only a few days
longer."

What pleasure these words gave her, and how gladly she would have
fulfilled his wish! But it could not be, and he did not venture to
detain her by fresh entreaties after she had described how her aged
husband was suffering from her absence.

"I often ask myself what he still finds in me," she said. "True, so long
a period of wedded life is a firm tie. If I am gone and he does not find
me when he returns home from inspections, he wanders about as if lost,
and does