Bertuccio sprawled on his stomach on the grassy floor of the presence chamber in a palace of the Caesars', kicking with one idle foot a bit of stone that had once formed the classic nose of a god. San Pietro Martire was quietly grazing in the long spaces of the Philosophers' Hall, nibbling deftly green blades of grass that grew at the bases of the broken pillars. Near by lay the old amphitheatre, with its roof of blue sky, and its rows of grassy seats, circling a level stage and pit, and rising, one above another, in irregular outlines of green. Here, in the spot on which the central royal seat had once been erected, sat Daphne on her Scotch plaid steamer blanket: her head was leaning back against the turf, her lips were slightly parted, her eyes half closed. She thought that she was meditating on the life that had gone on in this Imperial villa two thousand years ago: its banquets, its philosophers' disputes, its tragedies and comedies played here with tears and laughter. In reality she was half asleep.
They were only a half mile from home, measuring by a straight line through the intervening hill; in time they were two hours away. San Pietro had climbed gallantly, with little silvery bells tinkling at his ears, to the summit of the mountain, and had descended, with conviction and with accuracy, planting firm little hard hoofs in the slippery path where the dark soil bore a coating of green grass and moss. For all their hard morning's work they were still on the confines of the Villa Gianelli, whose kingdom was partly a kingdom of air and of mountain.
Drowsing there in the old theatre in the sun, Daphne presently saw, stepping daintily through one of the entrances at the side, an audience of white sheep. They overspread the stage, cropping as they went. They climbed the green encircling seats, leaping up or down, where a softer tuft of grass invited. They broke the dreamy silence with the muffled sound of their hoofs, and an occasional bleat.
The girl knew them now. She had seen before the brown-faced twins, both wearing tiny horns; they always kept together. She knew the great white ewe with a blue ribbon on her neck, and the huge ram with twisted horns that made her half afraid. Would he mind Scotch plaid, she wondered, as he raised his head and eyed her? She sat alert, ready for swift flight up the slope behind her in case of attack, but he turned to his pasture in the pit with the air of one ready to waive trifles, and the girl leaned back again.
When Apollo, the keeper of sheep, entered, Daphne received his greeting with no surprise: even if he had come without these forerunners she would have known that he was near. It was she who broke the silence as he approached.
"A theatre seems a singularly appropriate place for you and your flock," she remarked. "You make a capital actor."
There was no laughter in his eyes to-day and he did not answer. A wistful look veiled the triumphant gladness of his face.
"They didn't play pastorals in olden time, did they?" asked Daphne.
"No," he answered, "they lived them. When they had forgotten how to do that they began to act."
He took a flute from his pocket and began to play. A cry rang out through the gladness of the notes, and it brought tears to the girl's eyes. He stopped, seeing them there, and put the flute back into his pocket.
"Did you take my advice the other day?" he asked.
"The advice was very general," said Daphne. "I presume an oracle's always is. No, I did not follow it."
"Antigone, Antigone," he murmured.
"Why Antigone?" demanded the girl.
"Because your duty is dearer to you than life, and love."
"Please go down there," said the girl impetuously, "and play Antigone for me. Make me see it and feel it. I have been sitting here for an hour wishing that I could realize here a tragedy of long ago."
He bowed submissively.
"Commands from Caesar's seat must always be obeyed," he observed. "Do you know Greek, Antigone?"
She nodded.
"I know part of this play by heart," she faltered. "My father taught me Greek words when I was small enough to ride his foot."
He stepped down among the sheep to the grassy stage, laying aside his hat and letting the sun sparkle on his bright hair. The odd sheepskin coat lent a touch of grotesqueness to his beauty as he began.
"'Nay, be thou what thou wilt; but I will bury him: well for me to die in doing that. I shall rest, a loved one with him whom I have loved, sinless in my crime; for I owe a longer allegiance to the dead than to the living: in that world I shall abide forever.'"
Slow, full, and sweet the words came, beating like music on the girl's heart. All the sorrow of earth seemed gathered up in the undertones, all its hunger and thirst for life and love: in it rang the voice of a will stronger than death and strong as love.
The sheep lifted their heads and looked on anxiously, as if for a moment even the heart of a beast were touched by human sorrow. From over the highest ridge of this green amphitheatre San Pietro looked down with the air of one who had nothing more to learn of woe. Apollo stood in the centre of the stage, taking one voice, then another: now the angry tone of the tyrant, Creon, now the wail of the chorus, hurt but undecided, then breaking into the unspeakable sweetness and firmness of Antigone's tones. The sheep went back to their nibbling; San Pietro trotted away with his jingling bells, but Daphne sat with her face leaning on her hands, and slow tears trickling over her fingers.
The despairing lover's cry broke in on Antigone's sorrow; Haemon, "bitter for the baffled hope of his marriage," pleaded with his father Creon for the life of his beloved. Into his arguments for mercy and justice crept that cry of the music on the hills that had sounded through lonely hours in Daphne's ears. It was the old call of passion, pleading, imperious, irresistible, and the girl on Caesar's seat answered to it as harp strings answer to the master's hand. The wail of Antigone seemed to come from the depths of her own being:—
"Bear me witness, in what sort, unwept of friends, and by what laws I pass to the rock-closed prison of my strange tomb, ah me unhappy!... No bridal bed, no bridal song hath been mine, no joy of marriage."
The sun hung low above the encircling hills when the lover's last cry sounded in the green theatre, drowning grief in triumph as he chose death with his beloved before all other good. Then there was silence, while the round, golden sun seemed resting in a red-gold haze on the hilltop, and Daphne, sitting with closed eyes, felt the touch of two hands upon her own.
"Did you understand?" asked a voice that broke in its tenderness.
She nodded, with eyes still closed, for she dared not trust them open. He bent and kissed her hands, where the tears had fallen on them, then, turning, called his sheep. Three minutes later there was no trace of him or of them: they had vanished as if by magic, leaving silence and shadow. The girl climbed the hill toward home on San Pietro's back, shaken, awed, afraid.
If Bertuccio had but shown any signs of having seen her companion of yesterday, Daphne's bewilderment would have been less; but to keep meeting a being who claimed to belong to another world, who came and went, invisible, it would seem, when he chose, to other eyes except her own, might well rouse strange thoughts in the mind of a girl cut off from her old life in the world of commonplace events. To be sure, the shepherd Antoli had seen him, but had spoken of him voluntarily as a mysterious creature, one of the blessed saints come down to aid the sick. The beggar woman had seen him, but had fallen prostrate at his feet as in awe of supernatural presence. When the wandering god had talked across the hedge the eyes of Giacomo and Assunta had apparently been holden; and now Bertuccio, whose ears were keen, and whose eyes, in their lazy Italian fashion, saw more then they ever seemed to, Bertuccio had been all the afternoon within a stone's throw of the place where the god had played to her, and Bertuccio gave no sign of having seen a man. She eyed him questioningly as they started out the next morning on their way to the ruins of some famous baths on the mountain facing them.
There was keenness in the autumn air that morning, but the green slopes far and near bore no trace of flaming color or of decay, as in fall at home; it was rather like a glimpse of some cool, eternal spring. A stream of water trickled down under thick grass at the side of the road, and violets grew there.
"San Pietro!" said Daphne, with a little tug at the bridle. The long ears were jerked hastily back to hear what was to come. "I know you disapprove of me, for you saw it all."
The ears kept that position in which any one who has ever loved a donkey recognizes scathing criticism. Daphne fingered one of them with her free hand.
"It is only on your back that I feel any strength of mind," she added. "When I am by myself something seems sweeping me away, as the tides sweep driftwood out to sea; but here, resolution crawls up through my body. We must be a new kind of centaur, San Pietro."
Suddenly her face went down between his ears.
"But if you and I united do drive him away, what shall we do,—afterwards?"
"Signorina!" called Bertuccio, running up behind them. "Look! The olives pick themselves."
At a turn in the road the view had opened. There, in a great orchard on the side of the hill, the peasants were gathering olives before the coming of the frost. There were scores of pickers wearing great gay-colored aprons in which they placed the olives as they gathered them from the trees. Ladders leaned against knotty tree trunks; baskets filled with the green fruit stood on the ground. Ladder and basket suggested the apple orchards of her native land, but the motley colors of kerchief and apron, yellow, magenta, turquoise, and green, and the gray of the eternal olive trees with the deep blue of the sky behind them, recalled her to the enchanted country where she was fast losing the landmarks of home.
"Signorina Daphne," said Bertuccio, speaking slowly as to a child, "did you ever hear them tell of the maiden on the hills up here who was carried away by a god?"
Daphne turned swiftly and tried to read his face. It was no less expressionless than usual.
"No," she answered. "Tell me. I am fond of stories."
They were climbing the winding road again, leaving the olive pickers behind. Bertuccio walked near, holding the donkey's tail to steady his steps.
"It was long ago, ages and ages. Her father had the care of an olive orchard that was old, older than our Lord," said Bertuccio, devoutly crossing himself. "There was one tree in it that was enormously big, as large as this,—see the measure of my arms! It was open and hollow, but growing as olives will when there is every reason why they should be dead. One night the family were eating their polenta—has the Signorina tasted our polenta? It makes itself from chestnuts, and it is very good. I must speak to my mother to offer some to the Signorina. Well, the door opened without any knocking, and a stranger stood there: he was young, and beyond humanity, beautiful."
Bertuccio paused; the girl felt slow red climbing to her cheek. She dared not look behind, yet she would have given half her possessions to see the expression of his face. Leaning forward, she played with the red tassels at San Pietro's ears.
"Go on! go on!" she commanded. "Avanti!"
San Pietro thought that the words were meant for him, and indeed they were more appropriate here for donkey than for man.
"He sat with them and shared their polenta," continued Bertuccio, walking more rapidly to keep up with San Pietro's quickened step. "And he made them all afraid. It was not that he had any terrible look, or that he did anything strange, only, each glance, each motion told that he was more than merely man. And he looked at the maiden with eyes of love, and she at him," said Bertuccio, lacking art to keep his hearer in suspense. "She too was beautiful, as beautiful, perhaps, as the Signorina," continued the story-teller.
Daphne looked at him sharply: did he mean any further comparison? There were hot waves now on neck and face, and her heart was beating furiously.
"He came often, and he always met the maiden by the hollow tree: it was large enough for them to stand inside. And her father and mother were troubled, for they knew he was a god, not one of our faith, Signorina, but one of the older gods who lived here before the coming of our Lord. One day as he stood there by the tree and was kissing the maiden on her mouth, her father came, very angry, and scolded her, and defied the god, telling him to go away and never show his face there again. And then, he never knew how it happened, for the stranger did not touch him, but he fell stunned to the ground, with a queer flash of light in his eyes. When he woke, the stars were shining over him, and he crawled home. But the maiden was gone, and they never saw her any more, Signorina. Whether it was for good or for ill, she had been carried away by the god. People think that they disappeared inside the tree, for it closed up that night, and it never opened again. Sometimes they thought they heard voices coming from it, and once or twice, cries and sobs of a woman. Maybe she is imprisoned there and cannot get out: it would be a terrible fate, would it not, Signorina? Me, I think it is better to fight shy of the heathen gods."
Bertuccio's white teeth showed in a broad smile, but no scrutiny on Daphne's part could tell her whether he had told his story for pleasure merely, or for warning. She rode on in silence, realizing, as she had not realized before, how far this peasant stock reached back into the elder days of the ancient world.
"Do you think that your story is true, Bertuccio?" she asked, as they came in sight of the grass-grown mounds of the buried watering-place toward which their steps were bent.
"Ma che!" answered Bertuccio, shrugging his shoulders, and snapping his fingers meaningly. "So much is true that one does not see, and one cannot believe all that one does see."
Daphne started. What HAD he seen?
"Besides," added Bertuccio, "there is proof of this. My father's father saw the olive tree, and it was quite closed."
Over the shallow tufa basin of the great fountain on the hill Daphne stood gazing into the water. She had sought the deep shadow of the ilex trees, for the afternoon was warm, an almost angry summer heat having followed yesterday's coolness. Her yellow gown gleamed like light against the dull brown of the stone and the dark moss-touched trunks of the trees. Whether she was looking at the tufts of fern and of grass that grew in the wet basin, or whether she was studying her own beauty reflected there, no one could tell, not even Apollo, who had been watching her for some time.
Into his eyes as he looked leaped a light like the flame of the sunshine beyond the shadows on the hill; swiftly he stepped forward and kissed the girl's shoulder where the thin yellow stuff of her dress showed the outward curve to the arm. She turned and faced him, without a word. There was no need of speech: anger battled with unconfessed joy in her changing face.
"How dare you?" she said presently, when she had won her lips to curves of scorn. "The manners of the gods seem strange to mortals."
"I love you," he answered simply.
Then there was no sound save that of the water, dropping over the edge of the great basin to the soft grass beneath.
"Can't you forgive me?" he asked humbly. "I am profoundly sorry; only, my temptation was superhuman."
"I had thought that you were that, too," said the girl in a whisper.
"There is no excuse, I know; there is only a reason. I love you, little girl. I love your questioning eyes, and your firm mouth, and your smooth brown hair"—
"Stop!" begged Daphne, putting out her hands. "You must not say such things to me, for I am not free to hear them. I must go away," and she turned toward home. But he grasped one of the outstretched hands and drew her to the stone bench near the fountain, and then seated himself near her side.
"Now tell me what you mean," he said quietly.
"I mean," she answered, with her eyes cast down, "that two years ago I promised to love some one else. I must not even hear what you are trying to say to me."
"I think, Miss Willis," he said gently, "that you should have told me this before."
"How could I?" begged the girl. "When could I have done it? Why should I?"
"I do not know," he answered wearily; "only, perhaps it might have spared me some shade of human anguish."
"Human?" asked Daphne, almost smiling.
"No, no, no," he interrupted, not hearing her. "It would not have done any good, for I have loved you from the first minute when I saw your blue drapery flutter in your flight from me. Some deeper sense than mortals have told me that every footstep was falling on my sleeping heart and waking it to life. You were not running away; in some divine sense you were coming toward me. Daphne, Daphne, I cannot let you go!"
The look in the girl's startled eyes was his only answer. By the side of this sun-browned face, in its beauty and its power, rose before her a vision of Eustace Denton, pale, full-lipped, with an ardor for nothingness in his remote blue eyes. How could she have known, in those old days before her revelation came, that faces like this were on the earth: how could she have dreamed that glory of life like this was possible?
In the great strain of the moment they both grew calm and Daphne told him her story, as much of it as she thought it wise for him to know. Her later sense of misgiving, the breaking of the engagement, the penitence that had led to a renewal of the bonds, she concealed from him; but he learned of the days of study and of quiet work in the shaded corners of her father's library, and of those gayer days and evenings when the figure of the young ascetic had seemed to the girl to have a peculiar saving grace, standing in stern contrast to the social background of her life.
He thanked her, when she had finished, and he watched her, with her background of misty blue distance, sitting where the shadow of the ilexes brought out the color of her scarlet lips and deep gray eyes.
"Daphne," he said presently, "you have told me much about this man, but you have not told me that you love him. You do not speak of him as a woman speaks of the man who makes her world for her. You defend him, you explain him, you plead his cause, and it must be that you are pleading it with yourself, for I have brought no charge, that you must defend him to me. Do you love him?"
She did not answer.
"Look at me!" he insisted. Her troubled eyes turned toward his, but dared not stay, and the lashes fell again.
"Do not commit the crime of marrying a man you do not love," he pleaded.
"But," said the girl slowly, "even if I gave him up I might not care for you."
"Dear," he said softly, "you do love me. Is it not so?"
She shook her head, but her face belied her.
"I have waited, waited for you," he pleaded, in that low tone to which her being vibrated as to masterful music, "so many lifetimes! I have found you out at last!"
"How long?" she asked willfully.
"Aeons," he answered. "Since the foundation of the world. I have waited, and now that I have found you, I will not let you go. I will not let you go!"
She looked at him with wide-opened eyes: a solemn fear possessed her. Was it Bertuccio's story of yesterday that filled her with foreboding? Hardly. Rather it seemed a pleasant thought that he and she should feel the bark of one of these great trees closing round them, and should have so beautiful a screen of brown bark and green moss to hide their love from all the world. No, no fear could touch the thought of any destiny with him: she was afraid only of herself.
"You are putting a mere nothing between us," the voice went on. "You are pretending that there is an obstacle when there is none, really."
"Only another man's happiness," murmured the girl.
"I doubt if he knows what happiness is," said Apollo. "Forgive me, but will he not be as happy with his altar candles and his chants without you? Does he not care more for the abstract cause for which he is working than for you? Hasn't he missed the simple meaning of human life, and can anything teach it to him?"
"How did you know?" asked Daphne, startled.
"The gods should divine some things that are not told! Besides, I know the man," he answered, smiling, but Daphne did not hear. She had leaned back and closed her eyes. The warm, sweet air, with its odor of earth, wooed her; the little breeze that made so faint a rustle in the ilex leaves touched her cheek like quick, fluttering kisses. The rhythmical drops from the fountain seemed falling to the music of an old order of things, some simple, elemental way of loving that made harmony through all life. Could love, that had meant only duty, have anything to do with this great joy in mere being, 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.
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 now, a beacon to guide her footsteps when she wanted to return. Meanwhile, the air was cool on throat and forehead and on her open palms: she had no wish to go in.
Here was a fountain whose jets of water, blown high from the mouths of merry dolphins, fell in spray in a great stone basin where mermaids waited for the shower to touch bare shoulders and bended heads. The murmur of the water, mingled with the murmur of unseen live things, and the melody of night touched the girl's discordant thoughts to music. Of what avail, after all, was her fierce struggle for duty? Here were soft shadows, and great spaces, and friendly stars.
Of course her lover-god, Apollo, was gone. She had known the other day when she left him on the hill that she would not see him again, for the look of his face had told her that. Of course, it was better so. Now, everything would go on as had been intended. Anna would come home; after this visit was over, there would be New York again, and Eustace. Yes, she was brave to share his duty with him, and the years would not be long. And always these autumn days would be shining through the dark hours of her life, these perfect days of sunshine without shadow. Of their experiences she need not even tell, for she was not sure that it had actually been real. She would keep it as a sacred memory that was half a dream.
She was walking now by the rows of tall chrysanthemums, and she reached out her fingers to touch them, for she could almost feel their deep yellow through her finger-tips. It was like taking counsel of them, and they, like all nature, were wise. Cypress and acacia and palm stood about like strong comforters; help came from the tangled vines upon the garden wall, from the matted periwinkle on the ground at her feet, and the sweet late roses blossoming in the dark.
Yes, he was gone, and the beauty and the power of him had vanished. It was better so, she kept saying to herself, her thoughts, no matter where they wandered, coming persistently back, as if the idea, so obviously true, needed proving after all. The only thing was, she would have liked to see him just once more to show him how invincible she was. He had taken her by surprise that day upon the hill, and had seen what she had not meant to tell. Now, if she could confront him once, absolutely unshaken, could tell him her decision, give him words of dismissal in a voice that had no tremor in it, as her voice had had the other day, that would be a satisfactory and triumphant parting for one who had come badly off. Her shoulder burned yet where he had kissed it, and yet she was not angry. He must have known that day how little she was vexed. If she could only see him once again, she said wistfully to herself, to show him how angry she was, all would be well.
Daphne had wandered to the great stone gate that led out upon the highway, and was leaning her forehead against a moss-grown post, when she heard a sudden noise. Then the voice of San Pietro Martire broke the stillness of the night, and Daphne, listening, thought she heard a faint sound of bleating. Hermes was calling her, and Hermes was in danger. Up the long avenue she ran toward the house, and, seizing the tiny lamp at the doorway, sped up the slope toward the inclosure where the two animals grazed, the flame making a trail of light like that of a firefly moving swiftly in the darkness. The bray rang out again, but there was no second sound of bleating. Inside the pasture gate she found the donkey anxiously sniffing at something that lay in the grass. Down on her knees went Daphne, for there lay Hermes stretched out on his side, with traces of blood at his white throat.
The girl put down her lamp and lifted him in her arms. Some cowardly dog had done this thing, and had run away on seeing her, or hearing her unfasten the gate. She put one finger on the woolly bosom, but the heart was not beating. The lamb's awkward legs were stretched out quite stiffly, and his eyes were beginning to glaze. Two tears dropped on the fat white side; then Daphne bent and kissed him. Looking up, she saw San Pietro gazing on with the usual grief of his face intensified. It was as if he understood that the place at his back where the lamb had cuddled every night must go cold henceforward.
"We must bury him, San Pietro," said Daphne presently. "Come help me find a place."
She put the lambkin gently down upon the ground, and, rising, started, with one arm over San Pietro's neck, to find a burial place for the dead. The donkey followed willingly, for he permitted himself to love his lady with a controlled but genuine affection; and together they searched by the light of the firefly lamp. At last Daphne halted by a diminutive cypress, perhaps two feet high, and announced that she was content.
The tool-house was not far away. Investigating, she found, as she had hoped, that the door was not locked. Arming herself with a hoe she came back, and, under the light of southern stars, dug a little grave in the soft, dark earth, easily loosened in its crumbling richness. Then she took the lamp and searched in the deep thick grass for flowers, coming back with a mass of pink-tipped daisies gathered in her skirt. The sight of the brown earth set her to thinking: there ought to be some kind of shroud. Near the tool-house grew a laurel tree, she remembered, and from that she stripped a handful of green, glossy leaves, to spread upon the bottom of the grave. This done, she bore the body of Hermes to his resting-place, and strewed the corpse with pink daisies.
"Should he have Christian or heathen burial?" she asked, smiling. "This seems to be a place where the two faiths meet. I think neither. He must just be given back to Mother Nature."
She heaped the sod over him with her own hands, and fitted neatly together some bits of turf. Then she took up her lamp to go. San Pietro, tired of ceremony, was grazing in the little circle of light.
"To-morrow," said Daphne, as she went down the hill, "he will be eating grass from Hermes' grave."
The shadow of branching palms fell on the Signorina's hair and hands as she sat at work near the fountain in the garden weaving a great wreath of wild cyclamen and of fern gathered from the hillside. Assunta was watching her anxiously, her hands resting on her hips.
"It's a poor thing to offer the Madonna," she said at length, "just common things that grow."
Daphne only smiled at her and went on winding white cord about the stems under green fronds where it could not be seen.
"I was ready to buy a wreath of beautiful gauze flowers from Rome," ventured Assunta, "all colors, red and yellow and purple. I have plenty of silver for it upstairs in a silk bag. Our Lady will think I am not thankful, though the blessed saints know I have never been so thankful in my life as I am for Bertuccio's coming home when he did."
"The Madonna will know," said Daphne. "She will like this better than anything else."
"Are you sure?" asked Assunta dubiously.
"Yes," asserted the girl, laughing. "She told me so!"
The audacity of the remark had an unexpected effect on the peasant woman. Assunta crossed herself.
"Perhaps she did! Perhaps she did! And do you think she does not mind my waiting?"
"No," answered Daphne gravely. "She knows that you have been very busy taking care of me."
Assunta trotted away, apparently content, to consult Giacomo about dinner. The girl went on weaving with busy fingers, the shadow of her lashes on her cheek. As she worked her thoughts wove for her the one picture that they made always for her now: Apollo standing on the hillside under the ilexes with the single ray of sunshine touching his face. All the rest of her life kept fading, leaving the minutes of that afternoon alone distinct. And it was ten days ago!
Presently Giacomo came hurrying down the path toward her, dangling his white apron by its string as he ran.
"Signorina!" he called breathlessly. "Would the Signorina, when she has finished that, graciously make another wreath?"
"Certainly. For you?"
"Not for me," he answered mysteriously, drawing nearer. "Not for me, but for Antoli, the shepherd who herds the flock of Count Gianelli. He has seen from the window the Signorina making a wreath for our Lady, and he too wants to present her with a thank-offering for the miracle she wrought for him. But will the Signorina permit him to come and tell her?"
Even while Giacomo was speaking Daphne saw the man slowly approaching, urged on apparently by encouraging gestures from Assunta, who was standing at the corner of the house. A thrill went through the girl's nerves as she saw the rough brown head of the peasant rising above the sheepskin coat that the shepherd-god had worn. Unless miracle had made another like it, it was the very same, even to the peculiar jagged edge where it met in front.
Antoli's expression was foolish and ashamed, but at Giacomo's bidding be began a recital of his recent experiences. The girl strained her ears to listen, but hardly a word of this dialect of the Roman hills was intelligible to her.
The gesture wherewith the shepherd crossed himself, and his devout pointing to the sky were all she really understood.
Then Giacomo translated.
"Because he was ill—but the Signorina knows the story—the blessed Saint Sebastian came down to him and guarded the sheep, and he went home and became well, miraculously well. See how he is recovered from his fever! It was our Lady who wrought it all. Now he comes back and all his flock is there: not one is missing, but all are fat and flourishing. Does not the Signorina believe that it was some one from another world who helped him?"
"Si," answered Daphne, looking at the sheepskin coat.
"No one has seen the holy saint except himself, but the blessed one has appeared again to him. Antoli came back, afraid that the sheep were scattered, afraid of being dismissed. He found his little tent in order; food was there, and better food than shepherds have, eggs and wine and bread. While he waited the blessed one himself came, with light shining about his hair. He brought back the coat that he had worn: see, is it not proof that he was there?"
"The coat was a new one," interrupted the shepherd.
Giacomo repeated, and went on.
"He smiled and talked most kindly, and when he went away—the Signorina understands?"
Daphne nodded.
"He gave his hand to Antoli," said Giacomo breathlessly.
"I will make the wreath," said the Signorina, smiling. "It shall be of these," and she held up a handful of pink daisies, mingled with bits of fern and ivy leaves. "Assunta shall take it to the church when she takes hers. I rejoice that you are well," she added, turning to Antoli with a polite sentence from the phrase-book.
As she worked on after they were gone, Assunta came to her again.
"The Signorina heard?" she asked.
"Si. Is the story true?" asked Daphne.
Assunta's eyes were full of hidden meaning.
"The Signorina ought to know."
"Why?"
"Has not the Signorina seen the blessed one herself?" she asked.
"I?" said Daphne, starting.
"The night the lambkin was killed, did not the Signorina go out in great distress, and did not the blessed one come to her aid?"
"Ma che!" exclaimed Daphne faintly, falling back, in her astonishment, upon Assunta's vocabulary.
"I have told no one, not even Giacomo," said Assunta, "but I saw it all. The noise had wakened me, and I followed, but I stopped when I saw that the divine one was there. Only I watched from the clump of cypress trees."
"Where was he?" asked Daphne with unsteady voice.
"Beyond the laurel trees," said Assunta. "Did not the Signorina see?"
The girl shook her head.
"How did you know that he was one of the divine?" she asked.
"Can I not tell the difference between mortal man and one of them?" cried the peasant woman scornfully. "It was the shining of his face, and the light about his hair, Signorina. Every look and every motion showed that he was not of this world. Besides, how could I see him in the dark if he were not the blessed Saint Sebastian? And who sent the dog away if it was not he?" she added triumphantly.
"But why should he appear to me?" asked Daphne. "I have no claim upon the help of the saints."
"Perhaps because the Signorina is a heretic," answered Assunta tenderly. "Our Lady must have special care for her if she sends out the holy ones to bring her to the fold."
The woman's face was alight with reverence and pride, and Daphne turned back to her flowers, shamed by these peasant folk for their belief in the immanence of the divine.
Half an hour later Assunta reappeared, clad in Sunday garments, wearing her best coral earrings and her little black silk shoulder shawl covered with gay embroidered flowers. She held out a letter to the girl.
"I go to take the wreaths to Our Lady," she announced, "and to confess and pray. The Signorina has made them pretty, if they are but common things."
Daphne was reading her letter; even the peasant woman could see that it bore glad tidings, for the light that broke in the girl's face was like the coming of dawn over the hills.
"Wait, Assunta," she said quietly, when she had finished, and she disappeared among the trees. In a minute she came back with three crimson roses, single, and yellow at the heart.
"Will you take them with your wreaths for me to the Madonna?" she said, putting them into Assunta's hand. "I am more thankful than either one of you."
Assunta had carried a small tray out to the arbor in the garden, and Daphne was having her afternoon tea there alone. About her, on the frescoed walls of this little open-air pavilion, were grouped pink shepherds and shepherdesses, disporting themselves in airy garments of blue and green in a meadow that ended abruptly to make room for long windows. The girl leaned back and sipped her tea luxuriously. She was clad in a gown that any shepherdess among them might have envied, a pale yellow crepy thing shot through with gleams of gold. Before her the Countess Accolanti's silver service was set out on an inlaid Florentine table, partially protected by an open work oriental scarf. Upon it lay the letter that had come an hour before, and the Signorina now and then feasted her eyes upon it. Just outside the door was a bust of Masaccio, set on a tall pedestal, grass growing on the rough hair and heavy eyelids. Pavilion and tea-table seemed an odd bit of convention, set down in the neglected wildness of this old garden, and Daphne watched it all with entire satisfaction over her Sevres teacup.
Presently she was startled by seeing Assunta come hurrying back with a teacup and saucer in one hand, a hot water jug in the other. The rapid Italian of excited moments Daphne never pretended to understand, consequently she gathered from Assunta's incoherent words neither names nor impressions, only the bare fact that a caller for the Countess Accolanti had rung the bell.
"He inquired, too, for the Signorina," remarked the peasant woman finally, when her breath had nearly given out.
"Do you know him?" asked Daphne. "Have you seen him before?"
"But yes, thousands of times," said Assunta in a stage whisper. "See, he comes. I thought it best to say that he would find the Signorina in the garden. And the Signorina must pardon me for the card: I dropped it into the tea-kettle and it is wet, quite wet."
Assunta had time to note with astonishment before she left that hostess and caller met as old friends, for the Signorina held out her hand in greeting before a word of introduction had been said.
"I am told that your shepherd life is ended," remarked Daphne, as she filled the cup just brought. Neither her surprise nor her joy in his coming showed in her face.
"For the present, yes."
"You have won great devotion," said Daphne, smiling. "Only, they all mistake you for a Christian saint."
"What does it matter?" said Apollo. "The feeling is the same."
"Assunta knew you at once as one of those in her calendar," the girl went on, "but she seems to recognize your supernatural qualities only by lamplight. I am a little bit proud that I can detect them by day as well."
Her gayety met no response from him, and there was a long pause. To the girl it seemed that the enveloping sunshine of the garden was only a visible symbol of her new divine content. If she had looked closely, which she dared not do, she would have seen that the lurking sadness in the man's face had leaped to the surface, touching the brown eyes with a look of eternal grief.
"I ventured to stop," he said presently, "because I was not sure that happy chance would throw us together again. I have come to say good-by."
"You are going away?"
"I am going away," he answered slowly.
"So shall I, some day," said Daphne, "and then moss will grow green on my seat by the fountain, and San Pietro will be sold to some peddler who will beat him. Of course it had to end! Sometimes, when you tread the blue heights of Olympus, will you think of me walking on the hard pavements of New York?"
"I shall think of you, yes," he said, failing to catch her merriment.
"And if you ever want a message from me," she continued, "you must look for it on your sacred laurel here on the hill by Hermes' grave. It is just possible, you know, that I shall be inside, and if I am, I shall speak to you through my leaves, when you wander that way."
Something in the man's face warned her, and her voice became grave.
"Why do you go?" she asked.
"It is the only thing to do," he answered. "Life has thrown me back into the old position, and I must face the same foes again. I always rush too eagerly to snatch my good; I always hit my head against some impassable wall. I thought I had won my battles and was safe, and then you came."
The life had gone out of his voice, the light from his face. Looking at him Daphne saw above his temples a touch of gray in the golden brown of his hair.
"And then?" she asked softly.
"Then my hard-won control vanished, and I felt that I could stake my hopes of heaven and my fears of hell to win you."
"A Greek god, with thoughts of hell?" murmured Daphne.
"Hell," he answered, "is a feeling, not a place, as has often been observed. I happen to be in it now, but it does not matter. Yes, I am going away, Daphne, Daphne. You say that there are claims upon you that you cannot thrust aside. I shall go, but in some life, some time, I shall find you again."
Daphne looked at him with soft triumph in her eyes. Secure in the possession of that letter on the table, she would not tell him yet! This note of struggle gave deeper melody to the joyous music of the shepherd on the hills.
"I asked you once about your life and all that had happened to you: do you remember?" he inquired. "I have never told you of my own. Will you let me tell you now?"
"If you do not tell too much and explain yourself away," she answered.
"It is a story of tragedy, and of folly, recognized too late. I have never told it to any human being, but I should like you to understand. It has been an easy life, so far as outer circumstances go. Until I was eighteen I was lord and dictator in a household of women, spoiled by mother and sisters alike. Then came the grief of my life. Oh, I cannot tell it, even to you!"
The veins stood out on his forehead, and his face was indeed like the face of a tortured Saint Sebastian. The girl's eyes were sweet with sympathy, and 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 the first time since she had reached the Villa Accolanti that she was alone, and very far away from home.