m the
mystery of that face, and besides, she did not dare to look too closely.

"I should teach them joy," he answered simply.

They were so silent, looking at each other over the dark green hedge,
that the lizards crept back in the sunshine close to their feet.
Daphne's blue gown and smooth dark hair were outlined against the deep
green of her cypress tree. A grapevine that had grown about the tree
threw the shadow of delicate leaf and curling tendril on her pale cheek
and scarlet lips. The expression of the heathen god as he looked at
her denoted entire satisfaction.

"I know what you would teach them," she said slowly. "You would show
them how to ignore suffering and pain. You would turn your back on
need. Oh, that makes me think that I have forgotten to take your
friend Antoli any soup lately! For three days I took it, and then, and
then--I have been worried about things."

His smile was certainly one of amusement now.

"You must pardon me for seeming to change the subject," he said. "Why
should you worry? There is nothing in life worth worrying about."

Fine scorn crept into the girl's face.

"No," he continued, answering her expression. "I don't ignore. I am
glad because I have chosen to be glad, and because I have won my
content. There is a strenuous peace for those who can fight their way
through to it."

Suddenly, through the beauty of his color, the girl saw, graven as with
a fine tool upon his face, a story of grief mastered. In the lines of
chin and mouth and forehead it lurked there, half hidden by his smile.

"Tell me," said Daphne impulsively. Her hand moved nearer on the
hedge, but she did not know it. He shook his head, and the veil
dropped again.

"Why tell?" he asked. "Isn't there present misery enough before our
eyes always, without remembering the old?"

She only gazed at him, with a puzzled frown on her forehead.

"So you think it is your duty to worry?" he asked, the joyous note
coming back into his voice.

Daphne broke into a smile.

"I suppose I do," she confessed. "And it's so hard here. I keep
forgetting."

"Why do you want to remember?"

"It is so selfish not to."

He nodded, with an air of ancient wisdom.

"I have lived on this earth more years than you have, some thousands,
you remember, and I can assure you that more people forget their
fellows because of their own troubles than because of their own joys."

The girl pulled at a tendril of the vine wi