nise the incomprehensible power of
Nemesis. Ledscha had loosed it against him and his health, perhaps even
his life, and he imagined that she was standing before him with the
bridle and wheel, threatening him afresh.

Shivering, as if chilled to the bone, overwhelmed by intense horror,
he turned his blinded eyes upward to the blackness above and raised his
hand, for the first time since he had joined the pupils of Straton in
the Museum, to pray. He besought Nemesis to be content, and not add to
blindness new tortures to augment the terrible ones which rent his soul,
and he did so with all the ardour of his passionate nature.

The steward Gras had received orders to wake the Lady Thyone if anything
unusual happened to the blind man, and when he heard the unfortunate
artist groan so pitifully that it would have moved a stone, and saw him
raise his hand despairingly to his head, he thought it was time to utter
words of consolation, and a short time after the anxious matron followed
him.

Her low exclamation startled Hermon. To be disturbed in the first
prayer after so long a time, in the midst of the cries of distress of a
despairing soul, is scarcely endurable, and the blind man imposed little
restraint upon himself when his old friend asked what had occurred, and
urged him not to expose himself longer to the damp night air.

At first he resolutely resisted, declaring that he should lose his
senses alone in the close cabin.

Then, in her cordial, simple way, she offered to bear him company in the
cabin. She could not sleep longer, at any rate; she must leave him early
in the morning, and they still had many things to confide to each other.

Touched by so much kindness, he yielded and, leaning on the Bithynian's
arm, followed her, not into his little cabin, but into the captain's
spacious sitting room.

Only a single lamp dimly lighted the wainscoting, composed of ebony,
ivory, and tortoise shell, the gay rug carpet, and the giraffe and
panther skins hung on the walls and doors and flung on the couches and
the floor.

Thyone needed no brilliant illumination for this conversation, and the
blinded man was ordered to avoid it.

The matron was glad to be permitted to communicate to Hermon so speedily
all that filled her own heart.

While he remained on deck, she had gone to Daphne's cabin.

She had already retired, and when Thyone went to the side of the couch
she found the girl, with her cheeks wet with tears, st