fill again with cool red wine the slender glass at her right
hand. When the time for dessert came, she lifted a bunch of
purple grapes and put them on her plate, breaking them off slowly
with fingers that got stained.

"I shall wake up by and by!" she said, leaning back in her carved
Florentine chair. "Only I hope it may be soon. Otherwise," she
added, nibbling a bit of ginger, unconscious that her figures
were mixed, "I shall forget my way back to the world."


CHAPTER VI

There 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