While speaking, her head nodded swiftly up and down, and when at last she bowed it wearily, her visitors heard her murmur the names of Satabus and Hanno, sometimes tenderly, sometimes mournfully.

Finally she asked whether any one else was concerned in Ledscha’s flight; and when she learned that a Gallic bridge-builder accompanied the fugitive wife, she again started up as if frantic, exclaiming:  “Yes, to Nemesis with the gold!  We neither need nor want it, and Satabus, my son, he will bless me for renunciation—­”

Here exhaustion again silenced her.  She gazed mutely and thoughtfully into vacancy, until at last, turning to Bias, she began more calmly:  “You will see her again, man, and must tell her what the clan of Tabus bought with her talents.  Take her my curse, and let her know that her friends would be my foes, and her foes should find in Tabus a benefactress!”

Then, deeply buried in thought, she again fixed her eyes on the floor; but at last she called to Hermon, saying:  “You, blind Greek—­am I not right?—­the torch was thrust into your face, and you lost the sight of both eyes?”

The artist assented to this question; but she bade him sit down before her, and when he bent his face near her she raised one lid after the other with trembling fingers, yet lightly and skilfully, gazed long and intently into his eyes, and murmured:  “Like black Psoti and lawless Simeon, and they are both cured.”

“Can you restore me?” Hermon now asked in great excitement.  “Answer me honestly, you experienced woman!  Give me back my sight, and demand whatever gold and valuables I still possess—­”

“Keep them,” Tabus contemptuously interrupted.  “Not for gold or goods will I restore you the best gift man can lose.  I will cure you because you are the person to whom the infamous wretch most ardently wished the sorest trouble.  When she hoped to destroy you, she perceived in this deed the happiness which had been promised to her on a night when the full moon was shining.  To-day—­this very night—­the disk between Astarte’s horns rounds again, and presently—­wait a little while!—­ presently you shall have what the light restores you—­” Then she called the Biamite woman, ordered her to bring the medicine chest, and took from it one vessel after another.  The box she was seeking was among the last and, while handing it to Bias, she muttered:  “Oh, yes, certainly—­it does one good to destroy a foe, but no less to make her foe happy!”

Turning to the freedman, she went on in a louder tone:  “You, slave, shall inform Hanno’s wife that old Tabus gave the sculptor, whose blindness she caused, the remedy which restored the sight of black Psoti, whom she knew.”  Here she paused, gazed upward, and murmured almost unintelligibly:  “Satabus, Hanno!  If this is the last act of the old mother, it will give ye pleasure.”

Then she told Hermon to kneel again, and ordered the slave to hold the lamp which her nurse Tasia had just lighted at the hearth fire.