ing, which turned the world to gold?

"I must, I must win you," came the voice again, and it was like a cry.
"Loving with more than human love, I will not be denied!"

She opened her eyes and watched him: the whole, firmly-knit frame in
the brown golf-suit was quivering.

"It has never turned out well," she said lightly, "when the sons of the
gods married with the daughters of men."

Perhaps he would have rebuked her for the jest, but he saw her face.

"I offer you all that man or god can offer," he said, standing before
her. "I offer you the devotion of a whole life. Will you take it?"

"I will not break my promise," said the girl, rising. Her eyes were
level with his. She found such power in them that she cried out
against it in sudden anger.

"Why do you tempt me so? Why do you come and trouble my mind and take
away my peace? Who are you? What are you?"

"If you want a human name for me"--he answered.

She raised her hand swiftly to stop him. "No, don't!" she said. "I do
not want to know. Don't tell me anything, for the mystery is part of
the beauty of you."

A shaft of golden sunlight pierced the ilex shade and smote her
forehead as she stood there.

"Apollo, the sun god," she said, smiling, as she turned and left him
alone.

CHAPTER XIV

Overhead was a sky of soft, dusky blue, broken by the clear light of
the stars: all about were the familiar walks of the villa garden,
mysterious now in the darkness, and seeming to lead into infinite
space. The lines of aloe, fig, and palm stood like shadows guarding a
world of mystery. Daphne, wandering alone in the garden at midnight,
half exultant, half afraid, stepped noiselessly along the pebbled walks
with a feeling that that world was about to open for her. Ahead,
through an arch where the thick foliage of the ilexes had been cut to
leave the way clear for the passer-by, a single golden planet shone low
in the west, and the garden path led to it.

Daphne had been unable to sleep, for sleeplessness had become a habit
during the past week. Whether she was too happy or too unhappy she
could not tell: she only knew that she was restless and smothering for
air and space. Hastily dressing, she had stolen on tiptoe down the
broad stairway by the running water and out into the night, carrying a
tiny Greek lamp with a single flame, clear, as only the flame of olive
oil can be. She had put the lamp down in the doorway, and it was
burning there