The love that resistlessly drew his heart to her was returned with equal strength and ardour. In spite of his deep mental distress, he could have shouted aloud in his delight and gratitude. He might now have been permitted to bind forever to his life the woman who had just rescued him from the greatest danger, but the confession he must make to his fellow-artists in the palaestra the following morning still sealed his lips. Yet in this hour he felt that he was united to her, and ought not to conceal what awaited him; so, obeying a strong impulse, he exclaimed: “You know that I love you! Words can not express the strength of my devotion, but for that very reason I must do what duty commands before I ask the question, ‘Will you join your fate to mine?’”
“I love you and have loved you always!” Daphne exclaimed tenderly. “What more is needed?”
But Hermon, with drooping head, murmured: “To-morrow I shall no longer be what I am now. Wait until I have done what duty enjoins; when that is accomplished, you shall ask yourself what worth the blind artist still possesses who bartered spurious fame for mockery and disgrace in order not to become a hypocrite.”
Then Daphne raised her face to his, asking, “So the Demeter is the work of Myrtilus?”
“Certainly,” he answered firmly. “It is the work of Myrtilus.”
“Oh, my poor, deceived love!” cried Daphne, strongly agitated, in a tone of the deepest sorrow. “What a terrible ordeal again awaits you! It must indeed distress me—and yet Do not misunderstand me! It seems nevertheless as if I ought to rejoice, for you and your art have not spoken to me even a single moment from this much-lauded work.”
“And therefore,” he interrupted with passionate delight, “therefore alone you withheld the enthusiastic praise with which the others intoxicated me? And I, fool, blinded also in mind, could be vexed with you for it! But only wait, wait! Soon-to-morrow even—there will be no one in Alexandria who can accuse me of deserting my own honest aspiration, and, if the gods will only restore my sight and the ability to use my hands as a sculptor, then, girl, then—”
Here he was interrupted by a loud knocking at the door.
The time allowed had expired.
Hermon again warmly embraced Daphne, saying: “Then go! Nothing can cloud what these brief moments have bestowed. I must remain blind; but you have restored the lost sight to my poor darkened soul. To-morrow I shall stand in the palaestra before my comrades, and explain to them what a malicious accident deceived me, and with me this whole great city. Many will not believe me, and even your father will perhaps consider it a disgrace to give his arm to his scorned, calumniated nephew to guide him home. Bring this before your mind, and everything else that you must accept with it, if you consent, when the time arrives, to become mine. Conceal and palliate nothing! But should the Lady Thyone speak of the Eumenides who pursued me, tell her that they had probably again extended their arms toward me, but when I return to-morrow from the palaestra I shall be freed from the terrible beings.”