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The leech assures me that this will pass away, but until the chaos within merges into endurable order there is nothing better for me than solitude and rest, rest, rest." "We will not deny them to you," replied Thyone, glancing significantly at Daphne. "Proclus's enthusiastic judgment was sincerely meant.
Daphne glanced anxiously at the green muslin frock. "It's it's pretty hard to be comfortable without cushions," she submitted diffidently. The man yielded again to laughter. "Are even Dryads afraid to spoil their frocks? Cushions it shall be. There are some extra ones in the chest in the East Indian room, aren't there?"
"Everything does itself in this most lazy country," remarked Daphne. "Dresses make themselves, boots repair themselves, food eats itself. There's just one idiom, si fa," "What?" asked Assunta. "Reflections," answered the girl, smiling down on her. "Assunta, may I go and help pick grapes?"
Presently, as singers dreamfully play with a flitting chorus, he began repeating to himself, "Better be a worm, and feed on the mulberries of Daphne, than a king's guest." Then of the much repetition arose questions importunate of answer. Was life in the Grove so very sweet? Wherein was the charm? Did it lie in some tangled depth of philosophy?
Daphne scarcely replied; but there dawned on her face the smile melting, provocative, intent which is the natural weapon of such a temperament. With a quick movement she nestled to her husband's side, and Roger was soon appeased. The visit which followed always counted in Roger Barnes's memory as the first act of the tragedy, the first onset of the evil that engulfed him.
Satiety and dissatisfaction were beginning to appear, and what he had attempted to do for the cure of his eyes had hitherto been futile. The remedies of the oculists to whom he had been directed by Daphne herself had proved ineffectual.
"And the Archdeacon is so important! Daphne might have been rude to anybody else but not the Archdeacon!" "How did they manage to get into such a subject so quickly?" asked Elsie in bewilderment. "I suppose he took it for granted that Daphne agreed with him! All decent people do." Lady Barnes's wrath was evident so was her indiscretion.
Love had usually been to him a richly flowing well-spring of gay delight, but this bond had plunged him from one vexation into another, one anxiety to another, and now that he had almost reached the goal of his wishes, he could not help fearing that he had transformed Ledscha's love to hate. Daphne was dear to him. He esteemed her highly, and owed her a great debt of gratitude.
Now she fixed her eyes on the floor, shook her gray head gently, and said anxiously: "Is that it? It certainly puts things in a different light. As the son of your never-to-be-forgotten mother, you are indeed dear to my heart; but Daphne is not less dear to me, and though in your marriage I just saw happiness for you both, that is now past. What is poverty, what is blindness!
"It was Madeleine's mother who made it hopeless," thought Daphne. "But for Mrs. Fanshaw it might have lasted." And memory called up Mrs. Fanshaw, the beautifully dressed woman of fifty, with her pride of wealth and family, belonging to the strictest sect of New York's social élite, with her hard, fastidious face, her formidable elegance and self-possession. How she had loathed the marriage!
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