uck. Until you feel that you are freed from this persecutor,
it would be criminal to bind a loving woman to you and your destiny. It
is not easy to find the right path for you both, for even Nemesis and her
power do not make the slightest change in the fact that you need faithful
care and watching in your blindness. Daylight brings wisdom, and we will
talk further to-morrow."

She rose as she spoke; but Hermon detained her, while from his lips
escaped the anxious question, "So you will take Daphne away from me, and
leave me alone in my blindness?"

"You in your blindness?" cried Thyone, and the mere reproachful tone of
the question banished the fear. "I would as quickly deprive my own son of
my support as I would you just at this time, my poor boy; but whether my
conscience will permit me to let Daphne remain near you only grant me, I
repeat it, until sunrise to-morrow for reflection. My old heart will then
find the right way."

"Yet whatever you may decide concerning us," pleaded the blind man, "tell
Daphne that, on the eve of losing her, I first felt in its full power how
warmly I love her. Even without Nemesis, the joy of making her mine would
have been denied me. Fate will never permit me to possess her; yet never
again to hear her gentle voice, never more to feel her dear presence,
would be blinding me a second time."

"It need not be imposed upon you long," said the matron soothingly.

Then she went close to him, laid her hand on his shoulder, and said: "The
power of the goddess who punishes the misdeeds of the reckless is called
irresistible and uncontrollable; but one thing softens even her, and
checks her usually resistless wheel: it is a mother's prayer. I heard
this from my own mother, and experienced it myself, especially in my
oldest son Eumedes, who from the wildest madcap became an ornament of his
class, and to whom the King--you doubtless know it--intrusted the command
of the fleet which is to open the Ethiopian land of elephants to the
Egyptian power. You, Hermon, are an orphan, but for you, too, the souls
of your parents live on. Only I do not know whether you still honour and
pray to them."

"I did until a few years ago," replied Hermon.

"But later you neglected this sacred duty," added Thyone. "Yet how was
that possible? In our barren Pelusium I could not help thinking hundreds
of times of the grove which Archias planted in your necropolis for the
dead members of his family, and how often, wh