The Queen was to appear immediately, and when she took her place near him
his blindness would again deprive him of the sight of her delicately cut
features, prevent his returning the glances from her sparkling eves, and
admiring the noble outlines of her thinly veiled figure.

Would his troubled spirit at least permit him to enjoy and enter without
restraint into the play of her quick wit?

Perhaps her arrival would relieve him from the discomfort which oppressed
him here.

A stranger, out of his own sphere, he felt chilled among these closely
united men and women, to whom no tie bound him save the presence of the
same host.

He was not acquainted with a single individual except the mythograph
Crates, who for several months had been one of the members of the Museum,
and who had attached himself to Hermon at Straton's lectures.

The artist was surprised to find this man in such a circle, but he
learned from Althea that the young member of the Museum was a relative of
Proclus, and a suitor of the beautiful Nico, one of the Queen's ladies in
waiting, who was among the guests.

Crates had really been invited in order to win him over to the Queen's
cause; but charming fair-haired Nico had been commissioned by the
conspirators to persuade him to sing Arsinoe's praises among his
professional associates.

The rest of the men present stood in close connection with Arsinoe, and