I could not endure it at all!  Every mouthful would choke me.  Just because she is so dear to me, I can not seek her hand; for, in return for her great self-sacrificing love, I could give her nothing save the keen discontent which seizes the proud soul that is forced constantly to accept benefits, as surely as the ringing sound follows the blow upon the brass.  My whole future life would become a chain of humiliations, and do you know whither this unfortunate marriage would lead?  My teacher Straton once said that a man learns to hate no one more easily than the person from whom he receives benefits which it is out of his power to repay.  That is wise, and before I will see my great love for Daphne transformed to hate, I will again try the starving which, while I was a sculptor at Rhodes, I learned tolerably well.”

“But would not a great love,” asked Thyone, “suffice to repay tenfold the perishable gifts that can be bought with gold and silver?”

“No, and again no!” Hermon answered in an agitated tone.  “Something else would blend with the love I brought to the marriage, something that must destroy all the compensation it might offer; for I see myself becoming a resentful misanthrope if I am compelled to relinquish the pleasure of creating and, condemned to dull inaction, can do nothing except allow myself to be tended, drink, eat, and sleep.  The gloomy mood of her unfortunate husband would sadden Daphne’s existence even more than my own; for, Thyone, though I should strive with all my strength to bear patiently, with her dear aid, the burden imposed upon me, and move on through the darkness with joyous courage, like many another blind man, I could not succeed.”

“You are a man,” the matron exclaimed indignantly, “and what thousands have done before you—­”

“There,” he loudly protested, “I should surely fail; for, you dear woman, who mean so kindly by me, my fate is worse than theirs.  Do you know what just forced from my lips the exclamation of pain which alarmed you?  I, the only child of the devout Erigone, for whose sake you are so well disposed toward me, am doomed to misfortune as surely as the victim dragged to the altar is certain of death.  Of all the goddesses, there is only one in whose power I believe, and to whom I just raised my hands in prayer.  It is the terrible one to whom I was delivered by hate and the deceived love which is now dragging me by the hair, and will rob and torture me till I despair of life.  I mean the gray daughter of Night, whom no one escapes, dread Nemesis.”

Thyone sank down into the chair by the blind artist’s side, asking softly, “And what gave you into her avenging hands, hapless boy?”