e were two weeks of golden days. The sun rose clear over the green
hills behind the villa, and dropped at night into the blue sea the
other side of Rome. Daphne counted off the minutes in pulse beats that
were actual pleasure. Between box hedges, past the clusters of roses,
chrysanthemums, and dahlias in the villa garden, she walked, wondering
that she had never known before that the mere crawling of the blood
through the veins could mean joy. She was utterly alone, solitary,
speechless; there were moments when the thought of her sister's present
trouble, and of the letter she was expecting from New York, would take
the color from the sky; but no vexatious thought could long resist the
enchantment of this air, and she forgot to be unhappy. She saw no more
of the shepherd god, but always she was conscious of a presence in the
sunshine on the hills.

On the eighth morning, as she paced the garden walks, a lizard
scampered from her path, and she chased it as a five year old child
might have done. A slim cypress tree stood in her way; she grasped it
in her arms, and held it, laying her cheek against it as if it were a
friend. Some new sense was dawning in her of kinship with branch and
flower. She was forgetting how to think; she was Daphne, the Greek
maiden, whose life was half the life of a tree.

When she took her arms from the tree she saw that he was there, looking
at her from over the hedge, with the golden brown lights in eyes and
hair, and the smile that had no touch of amusement in it, only of
happiness.

"Sometimes," he murmured, "you remind me of Hebe, but on the whole, I
think you are more like my sister Diana."

"Tell me about Diana," begged Daphne, coming near the hedge and putting
one hand on the close green leaves.

"We were great friends as children," observed Apollo. "It was I who
taught her how to hunt, and we used to chase each other in the woods.
When I went faster then she did, she used to get angry and say she
would not play. Oh, those were glorious mornings, when the light was
clear at dawn!"

"Why are you here?" asked Daphne abruptly, "and, if you will excuse me,
where did you come from?"

"Surely you have heard about the gods being exiled from Greece! We
wander, for the world has cast us out. Some day they will need us
again, and will pluck the grass from our shrines, and then we shall
come back to teach them."

"Teach them what?" asked the girl. She could make out nothing fro