“Then you thought that even the terrible affliction of blindness would not suffice to punish the man you hated?” asked Hermon.

“No,” she answered firmly; “for you could buy with your gold everything life offers except sight, while in me—­yes, in me—­gloom darker than the blackest night shrouded my soul.  Through your fault I was robbed of all, all that is clear to woman’s heart:  my father’s house, his love, my sister.  Even the pleasure in myself which had been awakened by your sweet flatteries was transformed by you into loathing.”

“By me?” cried Hermon, amazed by the injustice of this severe reproach; but Ledscha answered his question with the resolute assertion, “By you and you alone!” and then impatiently added:  “You, who, by your art, could transform mortal women into goddesses, wished to make me a humiliated creature, with the rope which was to strangle her about her neck, and at the same time the most repulsive of creeping insects.  ’The hideous, gray, eight-legged spider!’ I exclaimed to myself, when I raised my arms and saw my shadow on the sunlit ground.  ‘The spider!’ I thought, when I shook the distaff to draw threads from the flax in leisure hours.  ’Your image!’ I said, when I saw spiders hanging in dusty corners, and catching flies and gnats.  All these things made me a horror to myself.  And at the same time to know that the Demeter, on whom you bestowed the features of the daughter of Archias, was kindling the whole great city of Alexandria with enthusiasm, and drawing countless worshippers to her sanctuary!  She, an object of adoration to thousands, I—­the much-praised beauty—­a horror to myself!  This is what fed my desire for vengeance with fresh food by day and night; this urged me to remain with yonder wretch; for he had promised, after pillaging the royal palaces, to shatter your Demeter, the image of the daughter of Archias, which they lauded and which brought you fame and honour—­it was to be done before my eyes—­into fragments.”

“Mad woman!” Hermon again broke forth indignantly, and hastily told her how she had been misinformed.

Ledscha’s large black eyes dilated as if some hideous spectre was rising from the ground before her, while she heard that the Demeter was the work of Myrtilus and not his; that his friend’s legacy had long since ceased to belong to him, and that he was again as poor as when he was in Tennis during the time of their love.

“And the blindness?” she asked sadly.

“It transformed life for me into one long night, illumined by no single ray of light,” was the reply; “but, the immortals be praised, I was cured of it, and it was old Tabus, on the Owl’s Nest at Tennis, whose wisdom and magic arts you so often lauded, who gave the remedy and advice to which I owe my recovery.”

Here he hesitated, for Ledscha had seized the rope with one hand and the stake at her right with the other, in order not to fall upon her knees; but Hermon perceived how terribly his words agitated her, and spoke to her soothingly.  Ledscha did not seem to hear him, for while still clinging to the rope she looked sometimes at the sand at her feet, sometimes up to the full moon, which was now flooding both sky and earth with light.