"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.