n I am."

He drew nearer, his face bent so low that his lips touched her shoulder
as she stood turned from him. "You don't know your strength yet," he
said. "But you soon will. Are you going away from me like this? Don't you
think you're rather hard on me?"

It was a point of view that had not occurred to Dinah. Her warm heart had
a sudden twinge of self-reproach. She turned swiftly to him.

"I didn't mean to be horrid. Please don't think that of me! I know I
often am. But not to you--never to you!"

"Never?" he said.

His face was close to her, and it wore a faint smile in which she
detected none of the arrogance of the conqueror. She put up a shy,
impulsive hand and touched his cheek.

"Of course not--Apollo!" she whispered.

He caught the hand and kissed it. She trembled as she felt the drawing of
his lips.

"I--I must really go now," she told him hastily.

He stood up to his full height, and again she quivered as she realized
how magnificent a man he was.

"_A bientot_, Daphne!" he said, and let her go.

She slipped away from his presence with the feeling of being caught in
the meshes of a great net from which she could never hope to escape. She
had drunk to-night yet deeper of the wine of the gods, and she knew
beyond all doubting that she would return for more.

The memory of his kisses thrilled her all through the night. When she
dreamed she was back again in his arms.

CHAPTER XVII

THE UNKNOWN FORCE

"Arrah thin, Miss Isabel darlint, and can't ye rest at all?"

Old Biddy stooped over her charge, her parchment face a mass of wrinkles.
Isabel was lying in bed, but raised upon one elbow in the attitude of one
about to rise. She looked at the old woman with a queer, ironical smile
in her tragic eyes.

"I am going up the mountain," she said. "It is moonlight, and I know the
way. I can rest when I get to the top."

"Ah, be aisy, darlint!" urged the old woman. "It's much more likely he'll
come to ye if ye lie quiet."

"No, he will not come to me." There was unalterable conviction in
Isabel's voice. "It is I who must go to him. If I had waited on the
mountain I should never have missed him. He is waiting for me there now."

She flung off the bedclothes and rose, a gaunt, white figure from which
all the gracious lines of womanhood had long since departed. Her silvery
hair hung in two great plaits from her shoulders, wonderful hair that
shone in the shaded lamplight with a lustre that se