chias, and
this circumstance also aided in producing his change of view.

Hermon's blindness, it was to be hoped, would be cured.

Duty, and perhaps also interest, commanded him to show him frankly how
highly he estimated his art and his last work.

After the arrival of Thyone and Daphne, Hermon had consented to
accompany them on board the Proserpina, their spacious galley. True, he
had yielded reluctantly to this arrangement of his parents' old friend,
and neither she nor Daphne had hitherto succeeded in soothing the fierce
resentment against fate which filled his soul after the loss of his
sight and his dearest friend. As yet every attempt to induce him to
bear his terrible misfortune with even a certain degree of composure had
failed.

The Tennis leech, trained by the Egyptian priests at Sais in the art of
healing, who was attached as a pastophorus to the Temple of Isis, in the
city of weavers, had covered the artist's scorched face with bandages,
and earnestly adjured him never in his absence to raise them, and to
keep every ray of light from his blinded eyes. But the agitation which
had mastered Hermon's whole being was so great that, in spite of the
woman's protestations, he lifted the covering again and again to see
whether he could not perceive once more at least a glimmer of the
sunlight whose warming power he felt. The thought of living in darkness
until the end of his life seemed unendurable, especially as now all the
horrors which, hitherto, had only visited him in times of trial during
the night assailed him with never-ceasing cruelty.

The image of the spider often forced itself upon him, and he fancied
that the busy insect was spreading its quickly made web over his blinded
eyes, which he was not to touch, yet over which he passed his hand to
free them from the repulsive veil.

The myth related that because Athene's blow had struck the ambitious
weaver Arachne, she had resolved, before the goddess transformed her
into a spider, to put an end to her disgrace.

How infinitely harder was the one dealt to him! How much better reason
he had to use the privilege in which man possesses an advantage over the
immortals, of putting himself to death with his own hand when he deems
the fitting time has come! What should he, the artist, to whom his eyes
brought whatever made life valuable, do longer in this hideous black
night, brightened by no sunbeam?

He was often overwhelmed, too, by the remembrance of th