Her warm heart had
a sudden twinge of self-reproach. She turned swiftly to him.
"I didn't mean to be horrid. Please don't think that of me! I know I
often am. But not to you--never to you!"
"Never?" he said.
His face was close to her, and it wore a faint smile in which she
detected none of the arrogance of the conqueror. She put up a shy,
impulsive hand and touched his cheek.
"Of course not--Apollo!" she whispered.
He caught the hand and kissed it. She trembled as she felt the drawing of
his lips.
"I--I must really go now," she told him hastily.
He stood up to his full height, and again she quivered as she realized
how magnificent a man he was.
"_A bientot_, Daphne!" he said, and let her go.
She slipped away from his presence with the feeling of being caught in
the meshes of a great net from which she could never hope to escape. She
had drunk to-night yet deeper of the wine of the gods, and she knew
beyond all doubting that she would return for more.
The memory of his kisses thrilled her all through the night. When she
dreamed she was back again in his arms.
CHAPTER XVII
THE UNKNOWN FORCE
"Arrah thin, Miss Isabel darlint, and can't ye rest at all?"
Old Biddy stooped over her charge, her parchment face a mass of wrinkles.
Isabel was lying in bed, but raised upon one elbow in the attitude of one
about to rise. She looked at the old woman with a queer, ironical smile
in her tragic eyes.
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