Lastly, he asked to be told quickly how she had happened to come to the palace at the right time at so late an hour, and Daphne informed him as briefly and modestly as if the hazardous venture which, in strong opposition to her retiring, womanly nature, she had undertaken, was a mere matter of course.
When Thyone in her presence heard from Gras that Hermon intended to go to Proclus’s banquet, she started up in horror, exclaiming, “Then the unfortunate man is lost!”
Her husband, who had long trusted even the gravest secrets to his discreet old wife, had informed her of the terrible office the King had confided to him. All the male guests of Proclus were to be executed; the women—the Queen at their head—would be sent into exile.
Then Daphne, on her knees, besought the matron to tell her what threatened Hermon, and succeeded in persuading her to speak.
The terrified girl, accompanied by Gras, went first to her lover’s house and, when she did not find him there, hastened to the King’s palace.
If Hermon could have seen her with her fluttering hair, dishevelled by the night breeze, and checks blanched by excitement and terror, if he had been told how she struggled with Thyone, who tried to detain her and lock her up before she left her father’s house, he would have perceived with still prouder joy, had that been possible, what he possessed in the devoted love of this true woman.
Grateful and moved by joyous hopes, he informed Daphne of the words of the oracle, which had imprinted themselves upon his memory.
She, too, quickly retained them, and murmured softly:
“Noise and dazzling radiance are hostile to the purer light, Morning and day will rise quietly from the starving sand.”
What could the verse mean except that the blind man would regain the power to behold the light of clay amid the sands of the silent desert?