you will make this three-leaved clover the luck-promising four-leaved one.  Your uncle, too, has often with praiseworthy generosity helped Arsinoe in many an embarrassment.  Only make the acquaintance of this beautiful royal lady, and the last drop of your blood will not seem too precious to shed for her!  Besides—­ Proclus told me so in confidence—­you have little favour to expect from the King.  How long he kept you waiting for the first word concerning a work which justly transported the whole city with delight!  When he did finally summon you, he said things which must have wounded you.”

“That is going too far,” replied Hermon.

“Then he kept back his real opinion,” Althea protested.  “Had I not made it a rule to maintain absolute silence concerning everything I hear in conversation from those with whom I am closely associated—­”

Here she was interrupted by Chrysippus, who asked if Althea had told her neighbour about his Rhodian eye-salve.

He winked at her and made a significant gesture as he spoke, and then informed the blind artist how graciously Arsinoe had remembered him when she heard of the remedy by whose aid many a wonderful cure of blind eyes had been made in Rhodes.  The royal lady had inquired about him and his sufferings with almost sisterly interest, and Althea eagerly confirmed the statement.

Hermon listened to the pair in silence.

He had not been able to see them, it is true, yet he had perceived their design as if the loss of sight had sharpened his mental vision.  He imagined that he could see the favourite and Althea nudge each other with sneering gestures, and believed that their sole purpose was to render him—­he knew not for what object—­the obedient tool of the Queen, who had probably also succeeded in persuading his usually cautious uncle to render her great services.

The remembrance of Arsinoe’s undignified conduct at the Dionysia, and the shameful stories of her which he had heard returned to his mind.  At the same time he saw Daphne rise before him in her aristocratic dignity and kindly goodness, and a smile of satisfaction hovered around his lips as he said to himself:  “The spider Althea again!  But, in spite of my blindness, I will be caught neither in her net nor in the Queen’s.  They are the last to bar the way which leads to Daphne and real happiness.”

The Rhodian was just beginning to praise Arsinoe also as a special friend and connoisseur of the sculptor’s art when Crates, Hermon’s fellow-student, asked the blind artist, in behalf of his beautiful companion, why his Demeter was placed upon a pedestal which, to others as well as himself, seemed too high for the size of the statue.

Hermon replied that he had heard several make this criticism, but the priests of the goddess refused to take it into account.