d 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, for I hold that man should
be master of 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.

"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 had been 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