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