The lovers took leave of each other with one last kiss, and the final words of the departing girl echoed consolingly in the blind man’s heart, “The more they take from you, the more closely I will cling to you.”

Hermon spent the latter portion of the night rejoicing in the consciousness of a great happiness, yet also troubled by the difficult task which he could not escape.

When the market place was filling, gray-haired Philippus visited him.

He desired before the examination, for which every preparation had been made, to understand personally the relation of his dead comrade’s son to the defeated conspiracy, and he soon perceived that Hermon’s presence at the banquet was due solely to an unlucky accident or in consequence of the Queen’s desire to win him over to her plot.

Yet he was forced to advise the blind sculptor to leave Alexandria.  The suspicion that he had been associated with the conspirators was the more difficult to refute, because his Uncle Archias had imprudently allowed himself to be persuaded by Proclus and Arsinoe to lend the Queen large sums, which had undoubtedly been used to promote her abominable plans.

Philippus also informed him that he had just come from Archias, whom he had earnestly urged to fly as quickly as possible from the persecution which was inevitable; for, secure as Hermon’s uncle felt in his innocence, the receipts for the large sums loaned by him, which had just been found in Proclus’s possession, would bear witness against him.  Envy and ill will would also have a share in this affair, and the usually benevolent King knew no mercy where crime against his own person was concerned.  So Archias intended to leave the city on one of his own ships that very day.  Daphne, of course, would accompany him.

The prisoner listened in surprise and anxiety.

His uncle driven from his secure possessions to distant lands!  Daphne taken from him, he knew not whither nor for how long a time, after he had just been assured of her great love!  He himself on the way to expose himself to the malice and mockery of the whole city!

His heart contracted painfully, and his solicitude about his uncle’s fate increased when Philippus informed him that the conspirators had been arrested at the banquet and, headed by Amyntas, the Rhodian, Chrysippus, and Proclus, had perished by the executioner’s sword at sunrise.

The Queen, Althea, and the other ladies were already on the way to Coptos, in Upper Egypt, whither the King had exiled them.

Ptolemy had intrusted the execution of this severe punishment to Alexander’s former comrade as the most trustworthy and discreet of his subjects, but rejected, with angry curtness, Philippus’s attempt to uphold the innocence of his friend Archias.

The old man’s conversation with Hermon was interrupted by the functionaries who subjected him and Crates to the examination.  It lasted a long time, and referred to every incident in the artist’s life since his return to Alexandria.  The result was favourable, and the prisoner was dismissed from confinement with the learned companion of his fate.