; 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 not even relish his food, though the same cook has prepared it
for years. And he, who forgets nothing and knows by name a large number
of the many thousand men he commands, would very probably, when I am
away, join the troops with only sandals on his feet. To miss my ugly old
face really can not be so difficult! When he wooed me, of course I looked
very different. And so--he confessed it himself--so he always sees me,
and most plainly when I am absent from his sight. But that, Hermon, will
be your good fortune also. All you now know as young and beautiful will
continue so to you as long as this sorrowful blindness lasts, and on that
very account you must not remain alone, my boy--that is, if your heart
has already decided in favour of any one--and that is the case, unless
these old eyes deceive me."

"Daphne," he answered dejectedly, "why should I deny that she is dear to
me? And yet, how dare the blind man take upon himself the sin of binding
her young life--"

"Stop! stop!" Thyone interrupted with eager warmth. "She loves you, and
to be everything to you is the greatest happiness she can imagine."

"Until repentance awakes, and it is too late," he answered gravely. "But
even were her love strong enough to share her husband's misfortune
patiently--nay, perhaps with joyous courage--it would still be
contemptible baseness were I to profit by that love and seek her hand."

"Hermon!" the matron now exclaimed reproachfully; but he repeated with
strong emphasis: "Yes, it would be baseness so great that even her most
ardent love could not save me from the reproach of having committed it. I
will not speak of her father, to whom I am so greatly indebted. It may be
that it might satisfy Daphne, full of kindness as she is, to devote
herself, body and soul, to the service of her helpless