to-morrow from the palaestra I shall be
freed from the terrible beings."

Lastly, he asked to be told quickly how she had happened to come to the
palace at the right time at so late an hour, and Daphne informed him as
briefly and modestly as if the hazardous venture which, in strong
opposition to her retiring, womanly nature, she had undertaken, was a
mere matter of course.

When Thyone in her presence heard from Gras that Hermon intended to go to
Proclus's banquet, she started up in horror, exclaiming, "Then the
unfortunate man is lost!"

Her husband, who had long trusted even the gravest secrets to his
discreet old wife, had informed her of the terrible office the King had
confided to him. All the male guests of Proclus were to be executed; the
women--the Queen at their head--would be sent into exile.

Then Daphne, on her knees, besought the matron to tell her what
threatened Hermon, and succeeded in persuading her to speak.

The terrified girl, accompanied by Gras, went first to her lover's house
and, when she did not find him there, hastened to the King's palace.

If Hermon could have seen her with her fluttering hair, dishevelled by
the night breeze, and checks blanched by excitement and terror, if he had
been told how she struggled with Thyone, who tried to detain her and lock
her up before she left her father's house, he would have perceived with
still prouder joy, had that been possible, what he possessed in the
devoted love of this true woman.

Grateful and moved by joyous hopes, he informed Daphne of the words of
the oracle, which had imprinted themselves upon his memory.

She, too, quickly retained them, and murmured softly:

"Noise and dazzling radiance are hostile to the purer light, Morning and
day will rise quietly from the starving sand."

What could the verse mean except that the blind man would regain the
power to behold the light of clay amid the sands of the silent desert?

Perhaps it would be well for him to leave Alexandria now, and she
described how much benefit she had received while hunting from the
silence of the wilderness, when she had left the noise of the city behind
her. But before she had quite finished, the knocking at the door was
repeated.

The lovers took leave of each other with one last kiss, and the final
words of the departing girl echoed consolingly in the blind man's heart,
"The more they take from you, the more closely I will cling to you."

Hermon spent the latt