CHAPTER
XIII
Over the shallow tufa basin of the great fountain on the hill Daphne stood gazing into the water. She had sought the deep shadow of the ilex trees, for the afternoon was warm, an almost angry summer heat having followed yesterday's coolness. Her yellow gown gleamed like light against the dull brown of the stone and the dark moss-touched trunks of the trees. Whether she was looking at the tufts of fern and of grass that grew in the wet basin, or whether she was studying her own beauty reflected there, no one could tell, not even Apollo, who had been watching her for some time.
Into his eyes as he looked leaped a light like the flame of the sunshine beyond the shadows on the hill; swiftly he stepped forward and kissed the girl's shoulder where the thin yellow stuff of her dress showed the outward curve to the arm. She turned and faced him, without a word. There was no need of speech: anger battled with unconfessed joy in her changing face.
"How dare you?" she said presently, when she had won her lips to curves of scorn. "The manners of the gods seem strange to mortals."
"I love you," he answered simply.
Then there was no sound save that of the water, dropping over the edge of the great basin to the soft grass beneath.
"Can't you forgive me?" he asked humbly. "I am profoundly sorry; only, my temptation was superhuman."
"I had thought that you were that, too," said the girl in a whisper.
"There is no excuse, I know; there is only a reason. I love you, little girl. I love your questioning eyes, and your firm mouth, and your smooth brown hair"—
"Stop!" begged Daphne, putting out her hands. "You must not say such things to me, for I am not free to hear them. I must go away," and she turned toward home. But he grasped one of the outstretched hands and drew her to the stone bench near the fountain, and then seated himself near her side.
"Now tell me what you mean," he said quietly.
"I mean," she answered, with her eyes cast down, "that two years ago I promised to love some one else. I must not even hear what you are trying to say to me."
"I think, Miss Willis," he said gently, "that you should have told me this before."
"How could I?" begged the girl. "When could I have done it? Why should I?"
"I do not know," he answered wearily; "only, perhaps it might have spared me some shade of human anguish."
"Human?" asked Daphne, almost smiling.
"No, no, no," he interrupted, not hearing her. "It would not have done any good, for I have loved you from the first minute when I saw your blue drapery flutter in your flight from me. Some deeper sense than mortals have told me that every footstep was falling on my sleeping heart and waking it to life. You were not running away; in some divine sense you were coming toward me. Daphne, Daphne, I cannot let you go!"
The look in the girl's startled eyes was his only answer. By the side of this sun-browned face, in its beauty and its power, rose before her a vision of Eustace Denton, pale, full-lipped, with an ardor for nothingness in his remote blue eyes. How could she have known, in those old days before her revelation came, that faces like this were on the earth: how could she have dreamed that glory of life like this was possible?
In the great strain of the moment they both grew calm and Daphne told him her story, as much of it as she thought it wise for him to know. Her later sense of misgiving, the breaking of the engagement, the penitence that had led to a renewal of the bonds, she concealed from him; but he learned of the days of study and of quiet work in the shaded corners of her father's library, and of those gayer days and evenings when the figure of the young ascetic had seemed to the girl to have a peculiar saving grace, standing in stern contrast to the social background of her life.
He thanked her, when she had finished, and he watched her, with her background of misty blue distance, sitting where the shadow of the ilexes brought out the color of her scarlet lips and deep gray eyes.
"Daphne," he said presently, "you have told me much about this man, but you have not told me that you love him. You do not speak of him as a woman speaks of the man who makes her world for her. You defend him, you explain him, you plead his cause, and it must be that you are pleading it with yourself, for I have brought no charge, that you must defend him to me. Do you love him?"
She did not answer.
"Look at me!" he insisted. Her troubled eyes turned toward his, but dared not stay, and the lashes fell again.
"Do not commit the crime of marrying a man you do not love," he pleaded.
"But," said the girl slowly, "even if I gave him up I might not care for you."
"Dear," he said softly, "you do love me. Is it not so?"
She shook her head, but her face belied her.
"I have waited, waited for you," he pleaded, in that low tone to which her being vibrated as to masterful music, "so many lifetimes! I have found you out at last!"
"How long?" she asked willfully.
"Æons," he answered. "Since the foundation of the world. I have waited, and now that I have found you, I will not let you go. I will not let you go!"
She looked at him with wide-opened eyes: a solemn fear possessed her. Was it Bertuccio's story of yesterday that filled her with foreboding? Hardly. Rather it seemed a pleasant thought that he and she should feel the bark of one of these great trees closing round them, and should have so beautiful a screen of brown bark and green moss to hide their love from all the world. No, no fear could touch the thought of any destiny with him: she was afraid only of herself.
"You are putting a mere nothing between us," the voice went on. "You are pretending that there is an obstacle when there is none, really."
"Only another man's happiness," murmured the girl.
"I doubt if he knows what happiness is," said Apollo. "Forgive me, but will he not be as happy with his altar candles and his chants without you? Does he not care more for the abstract cause for which he is working than for you? Hasn't he missed the simple meaning of human life, and can anything teach it to him?"
"How did you know?" asked Daphne, startled.
"The gods should divine some things that are not told! Besides, I know the man," he answered, smiling, but Daphne did not hear. She had leaned back and closed her eyes. The warm, sweet air, with its odor of earth, wooed her; the little breeze that made so faint a rustle in the ilex leaves touched her cheek like quick, fluttering kisses. The rhythmical drops from the fountain seemed falling to the music of an old order of things, some simple, elemental way of loving that made harmony through all life. Could love, that had meant only duty, have anything to do with this great joy in mere being, which turned the world to gold?
"I must, I must win you," came the voice again, and it was like a cry. "Loving with more than human love, I will not be denied!"
She opened her eyes and watched him: the whole, firmly-knit frame in the brown golf-suit was quivering.
"It has never turned out well," she said lightly, "when the sons of the gods married with the daughters of men."
Perhaps he would have rebuked her for the jest, but he saw her face.
"I offer you all that man or god can offer," he said, standing before her. "I offer you the devotion of a whole life. Will you take it?"
"I will not break my promise," said the girl, rising. Her eyes were level with his. She found such power in them that she cried out against it in sudden anger.
"Why do you tempt me so? Why do you come and trouble my mind and take away my peace? Who are you? What are you?"
"If you want a human name for me"—he answered.
She raised her hand swiftly to stop him. "No, don't!" she said. "I do not want to know. Don't tell me anything, for the mystery is part of the beauty of you."
A shaft of golden sunlight pierced the ilex shade and smote her forehead as she stood there.
"Apollo, the sun god," she said, smiling, as she turned and left him alone.