“Wilt thou try to take a message to Thoth from me? But, alas! for my punishment the doors are fastened.”
“They will release me,” said the pigmy, “when they hear my voice. I have done no harm all to-day. I believe Thoth must have left me in the garden to be thy messenger.”
“But,” said Daphne, “thou wast asleep on the island.”
“So much the easier to leave me,” laughed the pigmy. “But tell me the message, and I will run.”
Daphne put down the child, and sat down herself, burying her head in her hand, and tried to think of a message which might move Thoth. Shame and pride, not unmixed with dread, made the task difficult, and the pigmy began to grow restless.
“Shall I ask Thoth to come?—once before I took such a message for thee.”
At last, urged by her affectionate counsellor, Daphne wrote on a tablet these words: “Daphne still believes in the promise which Thoth made on leaving Athens, and prays in all humility that she may be restored to some Grecian city. She is not equal to the high position in which Thoth would have placed her. She is only a woman with the common feelings of nature, and no superior being. But oaths are binding even on the gods.”
She sent the pigmy before her to the palace, for she was too anxious to accompany her.
After a long interval, however, she followed, and found the apartment empty. The pigmy had been liberated, and a repast had been set in the usual place. Hope again arose in Daphne’s breast, though she still feared, from the absence of her little servants, that all was not well. She was too sick at heart to eat or drink, and waited in anxious expectation. At last night fell, but there was no answer of any kind. She lay down on the couch and tried to sleep.
After some hours of the deepest silence, she thought she heard a footfall near the head of the couch.