to her, and he was looking the other way. She feasted her eyes
on the color of the thing she held in her hand. It was a rough
glass whose shallow bowl had the old Etruscan curves of beauty,
and the crimson wine caught the sunlight in a thousand ways.
Bending over, she poured it out slowly on the green grass.

"A libation to Apollo," she said, not without reverence.


CHAPTER VIII

"I shall call you," said Daphne to the lamb on the fourth day of
his life with her, "I shall call you Hermes, because you go so
fast."

Very fast indeed he went. By garden path, or on the slopes below
the villa, he followed her with swift gallop, interrupted by many
jumps and gambols, and much frisking of his tail. If he lost
himself in his wayward pursuit of his mistress, a plaintive bleat
summoned her to his side. On the marble stairs of the villa,
even in the sacred precincts of the salon, she heard the tinkle
of his hard little hoofs, and she had no courage to turn him
back. He bleated so piteously outside the door when his lady
dined that at last he won the desire of his heart and lapped milk
from a bowl on the floor at her side as she ate her salad or
broke her grapes.

"What scandal!" muttered Giacomo every time he brought the bowl.
The Contessa would discharge him if she knew! But he always
remembered, even if Daphne forgot, and meekly dried the milk from