On the seventh day the leech removed the bandage from his patient’s eyes, and the cry of rapture with which Hermon clasped him in his arms richly rewarded him for his trouble and solicitude.

The restored man beheld in sharp, clear, undimmed outlines everything at which the physician desired him to look.

Now Erasistratus could write to his friend Herophilus in Alexandria that the operation was successful.

The sculptor was ordered to avoid the dazzling sunlight a fortnight longer, then he might once more use his eyes without restriction, and appeal to the Muse to help in creating works of art.

Thyone was present at this explanation.  After she had conquered the great emotion which for a time sealed her lips, her first question, after the physician’s departure, was:  “And Nemesis?  She too, I think, has fled before the new light?”

Hermon pressed her hand still more warmly, exclaiming with joyous confidence:  “No, Thyone!  True, I now have little reason to fear the avenging goddess who pursues the criminal, but all the more the other Nemesis, who limits the excess of happiness.  Will she not turn her swift wheel, when I again, with clear eyes, see Daphne, and am permitted to work in my studio once more with keen eyes and steady hand?”

Now the barriers which had hitherto restricted Hermon’s social intercourse also fell.  Eumedes, the commander of the fleet, often visited him, and while exchanging tales of their experiences they became friends.

When Hermon was alone with Thyone and her gray-haired husband, the conversation frequently turned upon Daphne and her father.

Then the recovered artist learned to whom Archias owed his escape from being sentenced to death and having his property confiscated.  Papers, undeniably genuine, had proved what large sums had been advanced by the merchant during the period of the first Queen Arsinoe’s conspiracy, and envious foes had done their best to prejudice the King and his sister-wife against Archias.  Then the gray-haired hero fearlessly interceded for his friend, and the monarch did not remain deaf to his representations.  King Ptolemy was writing the history of the conqueror of the world, and needed the aged comrade of Alexander, the sole survivor who had held a prominent position in the great Macedonian’s campaigns.  It might be detrimental to his work, on which he set great value, if he angered the old warrior, who was a living source of history.  Yet the King was still ill-disposed to the merchant, for while he destroyed Archias’s death sentence which had been laid before him for his signature, he said to Philippus:  “The money-bag whose life I give you was the friend of my foe.  Let him beware that my arm does not yet reach him from afar!”

Nay, his resentment went so far that he refused to receive Hermon, when Eumedes begged permission to present the artist whose sight had been so wonderfully restored.