best artists of his age.

The matron had listened to this confession with an agitated heart.
She had transported herself in imagination into the soul of the girl's
mother, and brought before her mind what objections the dead woman would
have made to her daughter's union with a man deprived of sight; but
Daphne had firmly insisted upon her wish, and supported it by many a
sensible and surprising answer. She was beyond childhood, and her three-
and-twenty years enabled her to realize the consequences which so unusual
a marriage threatened to entail.

As for Thyone herself, she was always disposed to look on the bright
side, and the thought that this vigorous young man, this artist crowned
with the highest success, must remain in darkness to the end of his life,
was utterly incompatible with her belief in the goodness of the gods.
But if Hermon was cured, a rare wealth of the greatest happiness awaited
him in the union with Daphne.

The mood in which she found the blind man had wounded and troubled her.
Now she renewed the bandage, saying: "How gladly I would continue to use
my old hands for you, but this will be the last time in a long while that
I am permitted to do this for the son of my Erigone; I must leave you
to-morrow."

Hermon clasped her hand closely, exclaiming with affectionate warmth:
"You must not go, Thyone! Stay here, even if it is only a few days
longer."

What pleasure these words gave her, and how gladly she would have
fulfilled his wish! But it could not be, and he did not venture to