t I love you! Words can not express the strength of my
devotion, but for that very reason I must do what duty commands before I
ask the question, 'Will you join your fate to mine?'"

"I love you and have loved you always!" Daphne exclaimed tenderly. "What
more is needed?"

But Hermon, with drooping head, murmured: "To-morrow I shall no longer be
what I am now. Wait until I have done what duty enjoins; when that is
accomplished, you shall ask yourself what worth the blind artist still
possesses who bartered spurious fame for mockery and disgrace in order
not to become a hypocrite."

Then Daphne raised her face to his, asking, "So the Demeter is the work
of Myrtilus?"

"Certainly," he answered firmly. "It is the work of Myrtilus."

"Oh, my poor, deceived love!" cried Daphne, strongly agitated, in a tone
of the deepest sorrow. "What a terrible ordeal again awaits you! It must
indeed distress me--and yet Do not misunderstand me! It seems
nevertheless as if I ought to rejoice, for you and your art have not
spoken to me even a single moment from this much-lauded work."

"And therefore," he interrupted with passionate delight, "therefore alone
you withheld the enthusiastic praise with which the others intoxicated
me? And I, fool, blinded also in mind, could be vexed with you for it!
But only wait, wait! Soon-to-morrow even--there will be no one in
Alexandria who can accuse me of deserting my own honest aspiration, and,
if the gods will only restore my sight and the ability to use my hands as
a sculptor, then, girl, then--"

Here he was interrupted by a loud knocking at the door.

The time allowed had expired.

Hermon again warmly embraced Daphne, saying: "Then go! Nothing can cloud
what these brief moments have bestowed. I must remain blind; but you have
restored the lost sight to my poor darkened soul. To-morrow I shall stand
in the palaestra before my comrades, and explain to them what a malicious
accident deceived me, and with me this whole great city. Many will not
believe me, and even your father will perhaps consider it a disgrace to
give his arm to his scorned, calumniated nephew to guide him home. Bring
this before your mind, and everything else that you must accept with it,
if you consent, when the time arrives, to become mine. Conceal and
palliate nothing! But should the Lady Thyone speak of the Eumenides who
pursued me, tell her that they had probably again extended their arms
toward me, but when I return