d ability had gratified
him more than he expressed, and he could not contradict Daphne when
she asserted that, in spite of the aimless life of pleasure to which
he devoted himself, he had remained the kind-hearted, noble man he had
always been.

In fact, he used, unasked and secretly, a considerable portion of
his large revenues to relieve the distress of the poor and suffering.
Archias learned this as the steward of his nephew's property, and when
to do good he made new demands upon him, he gladly fulfilled them;
only he constantly admonished the blind man to think of his own severe
sufferings and his cure. Daphne did the same, and he willingly obeyed
her advice; for, loudly and recklessly as he pursued pleasure in social
circles, he showed himself tenderly devoted to her when he found her
alone in her father's house. Then, as in better days, he opened his
heart to her naturally and modestly and, though he refrained from vows
of love, he showed her that he did not cease to seek with her, and her
alone, what his noisy pleasures denied. Then he also found the old tone
of affection, and of late he came more frequently, and what he confided
to no one else implied to her, at least by hints.

Satiety and dissatisfaction were beginning to appear, and what he had
attempted to do for the cure of his eyes had hitherto been futile. The
remedies of the oculists to whom he had been directed by Daphne herself
had proved ineffectual. The great physician Erasistratus, from whom he
first sought help, had refrained, at her entreaty and her father's, from
refusing to aid him, but indignantly sent him away when he persisted in
the declaration that it would be impossible for him to remain for months
secluded from all society and subsist for weeks on scanty fare.

He would submit even to that, he assured Daphne, after she represented
to him what he was losing by such lack of resignation, when the time
of rest had come for which he longed, but from which many things still
withheld him. Yesterday the King had invited him to the palace for the
first time, and to decline such an honour was impossible.

In fact, he had long wished for this summons, because he had been
informed that no representative of the sovereign had been present at
his reception. Only his wife Arsinoe had honoured him by a wreath and
congratulations. This lack of interest on the part of the King had
wounded him, and the absence of an invitation from the royal connoisseur