chestnut and cypress and gnarled olive lay long on the grass,
other sounds floated down to Daphne, music from some instrument
that she did not know. It was no harp, surely, yet certain
clear, ranging notes seemed to come from the sweeping of harp
strings; again, it had all the subtle, penetrating melody of the
violin. Whatever instrument gave it forth, it drew the girl's
heart after it to wander its own way. When it was gay it won her
feet to some dance measure, and all alone in the great empty
rooms she would move to it with head thrown back and her whole
body swaying in a new sense of rhythm. When it was sad, it set
her heart to beating in great throbs, for then it begged and
pleaded. There was need in it, a human cry that surely was not
the voice of a god. It spoke out of a great yearning that
answered to her own. Whether it was swift or slow she loved it,
and waited for it day by day, thinking of Apollo and his harping
to the muses nine.

So her old life and her old mood slipped away like a garment no
longer needed: her days were set to melody, and her nights to
pleasant dreams. The jangle of street cars and the twinges of
conscience, the noises of her native city, and her heart
searchings in the Little Church of All the Saints faded to the
remoteness of a faint gray bar of cloud that makes the sunset
brighter in the west. She went singing among the olives or past
the fountain under the ilexes on the hill: duties and
perplexities vanished in the clear sunshine and pleasant shadow
of this golden world.

And all this meant that she had forgotten about the mails. She
had ceased to long for letters containing good news, or to fear