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 and earth
with light.

At last she dropped it, and said in a hollow tone: "Now I understand
everything. You met her when Bias gave her the bridal dowry which was
to purchase my release from my husband. How it must have enraged her! I
thought of it all, pondered and pondered how to spare her; but through
whom, except Tabus, could I return to Hanno the property, won in battle
by his blood, which he had thrown away for me? Tabus kept the family
wealth. And she--the marriage bond which two persons formed was sacred
and unassailable--the woman who broke her faith with her husband and
turned from him--was an abomination to her. How she loved her sons and
grandsons! I knew that she would never forgive the wrong I did Hanno.
From resentment to me she cured the man whom I hated."

"Yet probably also," said Hermon, "because my blighted youth aroused her
pity."

"Perhaps so," replied Ledscha hesitatingly, gazing thoughtfully into
vacancy. "She was what her demons made her. Hard as steel and gentle
as a tender girl. I have experienced it. Oh, that she should die
with rancour against me in her faithful old heart! She could be so
kind!--even when I confessed that you had won my love, she still held me
d