The terrible misfortune which had now befallen him had only bound her more firmly to the man she loved.  She felt that she belonged to him indissolubly, and the leech’s positive assurance that his blindness was incurable had only increased the magic of the thought of being and affording tenfold more to the man bereft of sight than when, possessing his vision, the world, life, and art belonged to him.  To be able to lavish everything upon the most beloved of mortals, and do whatever her warm, ever-helpful heart prompted, seemed to her a special favour of the gods in whom she believed.

That it was Demeter, to the ranks of whose priestesses she belonged, who was so closely associated with his blinding, also seemed to her no mere work of chance.  The goddess on whom Hermon had bestowed the features of her own face had deprived him of sight to confer upon her the happiness of brightening and beautifying the darkness of his life.

If she saw aright, and it was only the fear of obtaining, with herself, her wealth, that still kept him from her, the path which would finally unite them must be found at last.  She hoped to conquer also her father’s reluctance to give his only child in marriage to a blind man, especially as Hermon’s last work promised to give him the right to rank with the 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 detain her by fresh entreaties after she had described how her aged husband was suffering from her absence.