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