not even relish his food, though the same cook has prepared it
for years. And he, who forgets nothing and knows by name a large number
of the many thousand men he commands, would very probably, when I am
away, join the troops with only sandals on his feet. To miss my ugly
old face really can not be so difficult! When he wooed me, of course
I looked very different. And so--he confessed it himself--so he always
sees me, and most plainly when I am absent from his sight. But that,
Hermon, will be your good fortune also. All you now know as young and
beautiful will continue so to you as long as this sorrowful blindness
lasts, and on that very account you must not remain alone, my boy--that
is, if your heart has already decided in favour of any one--and that is
the case, unless these old eyes deceive me."

"Daphne," he answered dejectedly, "why should I deny that she is dear to
me? And yet, how dare the blind man take upon himself the sin of binding
her young life--"

"Stop! stop!" Thyone interrupted with eager warmth. "She loves you, and
to be everything to you is the greatest happiness she can imagine."

"Until repentance awakes, and it is too late," he answered gravely.
"But even were her love strong enough to share her husband's misfortune
patiently--nay, perhaps with joyous courage--it would still be
contemptible baseness were I to profit by that love and seek her hand."

"Hermon!" the matron now exclaimed reproachfully; but he repeated with
strong emphasis: "Yes, it would be baseness so great that even her most
ardent love could not save me from the reproach of having committed it.
I will not speak of her father, to whom I am so greatly indebted. It may
be that it might satisfy Daphne, full of kindness as she is, to devote
herself, body and soul, to the service of her helpless companion. But
I? Far from thinking constantly, like her, solely of others and their
welfare, I should only too often, selfish as I now am, be mindful of
myself. But when I realize who I am, I see before me a blind man who is
poorer than a beggar, because the scorching flames melted even the gold
which was to help him pay his debts."

"Folly!" cried the matron. "For what did Archias gather his boundless
treasures? And when his daughter is once yours--"

"Then," Hermon went on bitterly, "the blinded artist's poverty will be
over. That is your opinion, and the majority of people will share it.
But I have my peculiarities, and the thought of bei