This reflection flashed through her mind with the speed of lightning
while she was listening to Althea's conversation with the sculptor.

"The question here can be no clever play upon the name and the nature of
the daughter of Erebus and Night," said the Thracian gravely. "I will
remind you that there is another Nemesis besides the just being who
drives from his stolen ease the unworthy mortal who suns himself in good
fortune. The Nemesis whom I will recall to-day, while angry Zeus is
hurling his thunderbolts, is the other, who chastises sacrilege--Ate, the
swiftest and most terrible of the Erinyes. I will invoke her wrath upon
you in this hour if you do not confess the truth to me fully and
entirely."

"Ask," Hermon interrupted in a hollow tone. "Only, you strange woman--"

"Only," she hastily broke in, "whatever the answer may be, I must pose
to you as the model for your Arachne--and perhaps it may come to that--
but first I must know, briefly and quickly, for they will be looking for
me immediately. Do you love Daphne?"

"No," he answered positively. "True, she has been dear to me from
childhood--"

"And," Althea added, completing the sentence, "you owe her father a debt
of gratitude. But that is not new to me; I know also how little reason
you gave her for loving you. Yet her heart belongs neither to Philotas,
the great lord with the little brain, nor to the famous sculptor
Myrtilus, whose body is really too delicate to bear all the laurels
with which he is overloaded, but to you, and you alone--I know it."