XVI.

Assunta had carried a small tray out to the arbor in the garden, and Daphne was having her afternoon tea there alone. About her, on the frescoed walls of this little open-air pavilion, were grouped pink shepherds and shepherdesses, disporting themselves in airy garments of blue and green in a meadow that ended abruptly to make room for long windows. The girl leaned back and sipped her tea luxuriously. She was clad in a gown that any shepherdess among them might have envied, a pale yellow crêpy thing shot through with gleams of gold. Before her the Countess Accolanti's silver service was set out on an inlaid Florentine table, partially protected by an open work oriental scarf. Upon it lay the letter that had come an hour before, and the Signorina now and then feasted her eyes upon it. Just outside the door was a bust of Masaccio, set on a tall pedestal, grass growing on the rough hair and heavy eyelids. Pavilion and tea-table seemed an odd bit of convention, set down in the neglected wildness of this old garden, and Daphne watched it all with entire satisfaction over her Sèvres teacup.

Presently she was startled by seeing Assunta come hurrying back with a teacup and saucer in one hand, a hot water jug in the other. The rapid Italian of excited moments Daphne never pretended to understand, consequently she gathered from Assunta's incoherent words neither names nor impressions, only the bare fact that a caller for the Countess Accolanti had rung the bell.

"He inquired, too, for the Signorina," remarked the peasant woman finally, when her breath had nearly given out. "Do you know him?" asked Daphne. "Have you seen him before?"

And the Signorina must pardon me for the card: I dropped it into the tea-kettle and it is wet, quite wet."

Assunta had time to note with astonishment before she left that hostess and caller met as old friends, for the Signorina held out her hand in greeting before a word of introduction had been said.

"I am told that your shepherd life is ended," remarked Daphne, as she filled the cup just brought. Neither her surprise nor her joy in his coming showed in her face.

"For the present, yes."

"You have won great devotion," said Daphne, smiling. "Only, they all mistake you for a Christian saint."

"What does it matter?" said Apollo. "The feeling is the same."

"Assunta knew you at once as one of those in her calendar," the girl went on, "but she seems to recognize your supernatural qualities only by candlelight. I am a little bit proud that I can detect them by day as well."

Her gayety met no response from him, and there was a long pause. To the girl it seemed that the enveloping sunshine of the garden was only a visible symbol of her new divine content. If she had looked closely, which she dared not do, she would have seen that the lurking sadness in the man's face had leaped to the surface, touching the brown eyes with a look of eternal grief.

"I ventured to stop," he said presently, "because I was not sure that happy chance would throw us together again. I have come to say good-by."

"You are going away?"

"I am going away," he answered slowly.

pus,

"I shall think of you, yes," he said, failing to catch her merriment.

"And if you ever want a message from me," she continued, "you must look for it on your sacred laurel there on the hill by Hermes' grave. It is just possible, you know, that I shall be inside, and if I am, I shall speak to you through my leaves, when you wander that way." Something in the man's face warned her, and her voice became grave. "Why do you go?" she asked.

"It is the only thing to do," he answered. "Life has thrown me back into the old position, and I must face the same foes again. I always rush too eagerly to snatch my good; I always hit my head against some impassable wall. I thought I had won my battles and was safe, and then you came."

The life had gone out of his voice, the light from his face. Looking at him Daphne saw above his temples a touch of gray in the golden brown of his hair. "And then?" she asked softly. "Then my hard won control vanished, and I felt that I could stake my hopes of heaven and my fears of hell to win you."

"A Greek god, with thoughts of hell?" murmured Daphne.

"Hell," he answered, "is a feeling, not a place, as has often been observed. I happen to be in it now, but it does not matter. Yes, I am going away, Daphne, Daphne. You say that there are claims upon you that you cannot thrust aside. I shall go, but in some life, some time, I shall find you again."

Daphne looked at him with soft triumph in her eyes. Secure in the possession of that letter on the table, she would not tell him yet! This note of struggle gave deeper melody to the joyous music of the shepherd on the hills.

"If you do not tell too much and explain yourself away," she answered.

"It is a story of tragedy, and of folly, recognized too late. I have never told it to any human being, but I should like you to understand. It has been an easy life, so far as outer circumstances go. Until I was eighteen I was lord and dictator in a household of women, spoiled by mother and sisters alike. Then came the grief of my life. Oh, I cannot tell it, even to you!"

The veins stood out on his forehead, and his face was indeed like the face of a tortured Saint Sebastian. The girl's eyes were sweet with sympathy, and with something else that he did not look

to see.

"There was a plan made for a journey. I opposed it for some selfish whim, for I had a scheme of my own. They yielded to me as they always did, and took my way. That day there was a terrible accident, and all who were dear to me were killed, while I, the murderer, was cursed with life. So, when I was eighteen, my world was made up of four graves in the cemetery at Rome, and of that memory. Whatever the world may say, I was as guilty of those deaths as if I had caused them by my own hand."

He had covered his face with his palms, and his head was bent. The girl reached out as if to touch the rumpled brown hair with consoling fingers, then drew her hand back. In a moment, when her courage came, he should know what share of comfort she was ready to give him. Meanwhile, she hungered to make the farthest reach of his suffering her

own.

"Since then?" she asked softly.

"Since then I have been trying to build my life up out of its ruins. I have tried to win content and even gladness,

let me

himself, even of remorse for his old sins. You see, I've been busy trying to find out people who had the same kind of misery, or some other kind, to face."

"Shepherd of the wretched," said the girl dreamily.

"Something like that," he answered. The girl's face was all a-quiver for pity of the tale; in listening to the story of his life she had completely forgotten her own. Then, before she knew what was happening, he rose abruptly and held out his hand.

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Every minute that I stay makes matters harder," he said. "I've got to go to see if I cannot win gladness even out of this, for still my gospel is the gospel of joy. Good-by.'

Suddenly Daphne realized that he was gone! She could hear his footsteps on the pebble-stones of the walk as he swung on with his long stride. She started to run after him, then stopped. After all, how could she find words for what she had to say? Walking to the great gate by the highway she looked wistfully between its iron rods, for one last glimpse of him. A sudden realization came to her that she knew nothing about him, not even an address, "except Delphi," she said whimsically to herself. Only a minute ago he was there; and now she had wantonly let him go out of her life forever.

"I wonder if the Madonna threw my roses away," she thought, coming back with slow feet to the arbor, and realizing for the first time since she had reached the Villa Accolanti that she was alone, and very far away from home.

XVII.

San Pietro and Bertuccio were waiting at the doorway, both blinking sleepily in the morning air. At San Pietro's right side hung a tiny pannier, covered by a fringed white napkin, above which lay a small flask decorated with corn husk and gay yarn, where red wine sparkled like a ruby in the sunshine. The varying degrees of the donkey's resignation were registered exactly in the changing angles at which his right ear was cocked.

"Pronta!" called Assunta, who was putting the finishing touches on saddle and luncheon basket. "If the Signorina means to climb the Monte Altiera she must start before the sun is high."

On the hillside above Daphne heard, but her feet strayed only more slowly. She was wandering, with a face like that of a sky across which thin clouds scud, in the grass about Hermes' grave. In her hand was the letter of yesterday, and in her eyes the memory of the days before. "It is all too late," said Daphne, who had learned to talk aloud in this world where no one understood. "The Greeks were right in thinking that our lives are

ruled by mocking fate.

ruled by mocking fate. I wonder what angry goddess cast forgetfulness upon my mind, so that I forgot to tell Apollo what this letter says."

Daphne looked to the open sky, but it gave no answer, and she paused by the laurel tree with head bent down. Then, with a sudden, wistful little laugh, she held out the letter and fastened it to the laurel, tearing a hole in one corner to let a small bare twig go through. With a blunt pencil she scribbled on it in large letters: "Let Apollo read, if he ever wanders this way."

"He will never find it," said the girl, "and the rain will come and soak it, and it will bleach in the sun. But nobody knows enough to read it, and I shall leave it there on his sacred tree, as my last offering. I suppose there is some saving grace even in the sacrifices that go astray."

Then she descended the hill, climbed upon San Pietro's back, and rode through the gateway.

An hour later, Assunta, going to find a spade in the tool-house, for she was transplanting roses, came upon the Signorina's caller of yesterday standing near the tool-house with something in his hand. The peasant woman's face showed neither awe nor fear; only lively curiosity gleamed in the blinking brown eyes.

"Is the Signorina at home?" asked the intruder.

"She

"But no!" cried Assunta. has started to climb the very sky to-day, Monte Altiera, and for what I can't make out. It only wears out Bertuccio's shoes and the asinetto's legs."

"Grazia," said Apollo, moving away. "Does his Highness think that the Signorina resembles her sister, the Contessa?" asked the peasant woman for the sake of a detaining word.

"Not at all," answered the visitor, and he passed into the open road.

Then he turned over in his hand the letter which he had taken from the laurel. Though he had read it three times he hardly understood as yet, and his face was the face of one who sees that the incredible has come to pass. The letter was made up of fifteen closely written pages, and it told the story of a young clergyman, who, convinced at last that celibacy and the shelter of the Roman priesthood were his true vocation, had, after long prayer and much meditation, decided to flee the snares of the world and to renounce its joys for the sake of bliss the other side of life.

"When you receive this letter, my dear Daphne," wrote Eustace Denton, "I shall have been taken into the brotherhood of Saint Ambrose, for I wish to place myself in a position where there will be no retracing my steps."

The face of the reader on the Roman hills, as it was lifted from the page again to the sunshine, was full of the needless pity of an alien faith.

Along the white road that led up the mountain, and over the grass-grown path that climbed the higher slopes, trod a solitary traveler.

Now his step was swift, as if some invisible spirit of the wind were wafting him on; and again the pace was slow and his head bent, as

as he climbed on and up. Out and out stretched the great Campagna, growing wider at each step, with the gray, unbroken lines of aqueduct leading toward Rome and the shining sea beyond.

On a great flat stone far up on the heights sat two motionless figures: below them, partly veiling the lower world, floated a thin mist of cloud.

"This must be Olympus," said Daphne.

"Any mountain is Olympus that touches the sky," answered Apollo. "Where are the others?" demanded the girl. "Am I not to know your divine friends?"

"Don't you see them?" he asked as in surprise,-"Aphrodite just yonder in violet robe, and Juno, and Hermes with winged feet "

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I am afraid I am a wee bit blind, being but mortal," answered Daphne. "I can see nothing but you."

Beside them on the rock, spread out on oak leaves, lay clusters of purple grapes, six black ripe olives, and a little pile of biscotti Inglesi. The girl bent and poured from the curving flask red wine that bubbled in the glass, then gave it to her companion, saying: "Quick, before Hebe gets here," and the sound of their merriment rung down the hillside.

"Hark! " whispered Daphne. "I hear an echo of the unquenchable laughter of the gods! They cannot be far away."

From another stone near at hand Bertuccio watched them with eyes that feigned not to see. Bertuccio did not understand English, but he understood everything else. Goodly shares of the nectar and ambrosia of this feast had fallen to his lot, and Bertuccio was almost as happy as the lovers in his own way. In the soft grass near San Pietro Martire nibbled peacefully, now and then lifting his eyes to see what was going on.

Once he brayed. He alone, of all nature, seemed impervious to the joy that had descended upon earth.

It was only an hour since Daphne had been overtaken. Few words had sufficed for understanding, and Bertuccio had looked away.

"My only fear was that I should find you turned into a laurel tree," said Apollo. "I shall always be afraid of that."

"Apollo," said Daphne irrelevantly, holding out to him a bunch of purple grapes in the palm of her hand, "there is a practical side to all this. People will have to know, I am afraid. I must write to my sister."

"I have reason to think that the Countess Accolanti will not be displeased," he answered. There was a queer little look about his mouth, but Daphne asked for no explanation.

"There is your father," he suggested. "Oh!" said Daphne. "He will love you at once. His tastes and mine are very much alike."

The lover-god smiled, quite satisfied. "You chose the steepest road of all to-day, little girl," he said. "But it is

not half so long nor so hard as the one I expected to climb to find you."

"You are tired! said Daphne anx

iously. iously. "Rest."

Bertuccio was sleeping on his flat rock; San Pietro lay down for a brief, ascetic slumber. The lovers sat side by side, with the mystery of beauty about them: the purple and gold of nearness and distance; bright color of green grass near, sombre tint of cypress and stone pine afar.

"I shall never really know whether you are a god or not," said Daphne dreamily.

"A very proper attitude for a woman to have toward her husband," he answered with a smile. "I must try hard to live up to the character. You will want to live on Olympus, and you really ought, if you are going to wear gowns woven of my sunbeams like the one you had on yesterday. How shall I convince you that Rome must do part of the time? You will want me to make you immortal: that always happens when a maiden marries a god."

"I think you have done that already,” said Daphne.

Margaret Sherwood.