She blushed slightly as she spoke, and, as her companion’s gloomy face brightened for a short time, went on eagerly:  “And now for the Arachne.  You will and must succeed in what you so ardently strive to accomplish, a subject so exactly adapted to your magnificent virile genius and so strangely suited to the course which your art has once entered upon.  And you can not fail to secure the right model.  You had not found it in Althea, no, certainly not!  O Hermon! if I could only make you see clearly how ill suited she, in whom everything is false, is to you—­your art, your only too powerful strength, your aspiration after truth—­”

“You hate her,” he broke in here in a repellent tone; but Daphne dropped her quiet composure, and her gray eyes, usually so gentle, flashed fiercely as she exclaimed:  “Yes, and again yes!  From my inmost soul I do, and I rejoice in it.  I have long disliked her, but since yesterday I abhor her like the spider which she can simulate, like snakes and toads, falsehood and vice.”

Hermon had never seen his uncle’s peaceful daughter in this mood.  The emotions that rendered this kindly soul so unlike itself could only be the one powerful couple, love and jealousy; and while gazing intently at her face, which in this moment seemed to him as beautiful as Dallas Athene armed for battle, he listened breathlessly as she continued:  “Already the murderous spider had half entangled you in her net.  She drew you out into the tempest—­our steward Gras saw it—­in order, while Zeus was raging, to deliver you to the wrath of the other gods also and the contempt of all good men; for whoever yields himself to her she destroys, sucks the marrow from his bones like the greedy harpies, and all that is noble from his soul.”

“Why, Daphne,” interrupted Chrysilla, raising herself from her cushions in alarm, “must I remind you of the moderation which distinguishes the Greeks from the barbarians, and especially the Hellenic woman—­”

Here Daphne indignantly broke in:  “Whoever practises moderation in the conflict against vice has already gone halfway over to evil.  She utterly ruined—­how long ago is it?—­the unfortunate Menander, my poor Ismene’s young husband.  You know them both, Hermon.  Here, of course, you scarcely heard how she lured him from his wife and the lovely little girl who bears my name.  She tempted the poor fellow to her ship, only to cast him off at the end of a month for another.  Now he is at home again, but he thinks Ismene is the statue from the Temple of Isis, which has gained life and speech; for he has lost his mind, and when I saw him I felt as if I should die of horror and pity.  Now she is coming home with Proclus, and, as the way led through Pelusium, she attached herself to our friends and forces herself in here with them.  What does she care about her elderly travelling companion?  But you—­yes, you, Hermon—­are the next person whom she means to capture.  Just now, when my eyes closed But no!  It is not only in my dreams; the hideous gray threads which proceed from this greedy spider are continually floating before me and dim the light.”  Here she paused, for the maid Stephanion announced the coming of visitors, and at the same time loud voices were heard outside, and the merry party who had been attending the breakfast given by the commandant of Pelusium entered the tent.