“The poet!” Hermon exclaimed.  “He draws from his own soul what sight, and sight alone, brings to us sculptors.  And, besides, his spirit remained free from the horrible darkness that assailed mine.  Joy itself, Daphne, has lost its illuminating power within.  What, girl, what is to become of the heart in which even hope was destroyed?”

“Defend it manfully and keep up your courage,” she answered softly; but he pressed her hand firmly, and, in order not to betray how self-compassion was melting his own soul, burst forth impetuously:  “Say rather:  Crush the wish whose fulfilment is self-humiliation!  I will go back to Alexandria.  Even the blind and crippled can find ways to earn their bread there.  Now grant me rest, and leave me alone!”

Thyone drew the girl away with her into the ship’s cabin.

A short time after, the steward Gras went to Hermon to entreat him to yield to Thyone’s entreaties and leave the deck.

The leech had directed the sufferer to protect himself from draughts and dampness, and the cool night mists were rising more and more densely from the water.

Hermon doubtless felt them, but the thought of returning to the close cabin was unendurable.  He fancied that his torturing thoughts would stifle him in the gloom where even fresh air was denied him.

He allowed the careful Bithynian to throw a coverlet over him and draw the hood of his cloak over his head, but his entreaties and warnings were futile.

The steward’s watchful nursing reminded Hermon of his own solicitude for his friend and of his faithful slave Bias, both of whom he had lost.  Then he remembered the eulogy of the grammateus, and it brought up the question whether Myrtilus would have agreed with him.  Like Proclus, his keen-sighted and honest friend had called Daphne the best model for the kindly goddess.  He, too, had given to his statue the features of the daughter of Archias, and admitted that he had been less successful.  But the figure!  Perhaps he, Hermon, in his perpetual dissatisfaction with himself had condemned his own work too severely, but that it lacked the proper harmony had escaped neither Myrtilus nor himself.  Now he recalled the whole creation to his remembrance, and its weaknesses forced themselves upon him so strongly and objectionably that the extravagant praise of the stern critic awakened fresh doubts in his mind.

Yet a man like the grammateus, who on the morrow or the day following it would be obliged to repeat his opinion before the King and the judges, certainly would not have allowed himself to be carried away by mere compassion to so great a falsification of his judgment.