"I find that most people are better than their beliefs," he answered. "Now, Miss Willis, I wonder if I dare ask you questions about the way of living that has brought you to believe in the divine efficacy of unhappiness." "My father is a clergyman," answered the girl, with a smile. "Exactly!" said the heathen god. "We have lived very quietly, in one of the streets of older New York. I won't tell you the number, for of course it would not mean anything to you." "Of course not," said Apollo. "He is rector of a queer little old-fashioned church that has existed since the days of Washington. It is quaint and irregular, and I am very fond of it." "It isn't the Little Church of All the Saints?" demanded her companion. "It is. How did you know?" "Divination," he answered. "Oh!" said Daphne. "Why don't you divine the rest?" "I should rather hear you tell it, if you don't mind." "I have studied with my father a great deal," she went on. "And then, there have been a great many social things, for I have an aunt who entertains a great deal, and she always needs me to help her. That has been fun, too." "Then it has been religion and dinners," he summarized briefly. "It has." "With a Puritan ancestry, I suppose?" "For a god," murmured Daphne, "it seems to me you know a great deal too much about some things, and not enough about others." "I have brought you something," he said, suddenly changing the subject. He lifted the sheepskin coat and held out to her a tiny lamb, whose heavy legs hung helpless, and whose skin shone pink through the little curls of wool. The girl stretched out her arms and gathered the little creature in them. "A warm place to lie, and warm milk are what it needs," he said. "It was born out of its time, and its mother lies dead on the hills. Spring is for birth, not autumn." Daphne watched him as he went back to his sheep, then turned toward the house. Giacomo and Assunta saw her coming in her blue dress between the beds of flowers with the lambkin in her arms. "Like our Lady!" said Assunta, hurrying to the rescue. The two brown ones asked no questions, possibly because of the difficulty of conversing with the Signorina, possibly from some profounder reason. "Maybe the others do not see him," thought the girl in perplexity. "Maybe I dream him, but this lamb is real." She sat in the sun on the marble steps of the villa, the lamb on her lap. A yellow bowl of milk stood on the floor, close to the little white head that dangled from her blue knee. Daphne, acting on Assunta's directions, curled one little finger under the milk and offered the tip of it to the lamb to suck. He responded eagerly, and so she wheedled him into forgetfulness of his dead mother. An hour later, as she paced the garden paths, a faint bleat sounded at the hem of her skirt, and four unsteady legs supported a weak little body that tumbled in pursuit of her. CHAPTER VII