DAPHNE
frisked dangerously near his comrade's heels. For all his melancholy, the asinetto was not insensible to caresses, and at night, when the lamb cuddled close to him as the two lay in the grass in the darkness, would curl his nose round now and then protectingly to see how this small thing fared.
So Daphne kept forgetting, forgetting, and nothing recalled her to her perplexity, except her donkey. San Pietro Martire she named him, for on his face was written the patience and the suffering of the saints. Some un-Italian sense of duty stiffened his hard little legs, gave rigid strength to his back. Willing to trudge on with his load, willing to rest, carrying his head a little bent, blinking mournfully at the world from under the drab hair on his forehead, San Pietro stood as a type of the disciplined and chastened soul. His very way of cropping the grass had something ascetic in it, reminding his mistress of Eustace at a festive dinner.
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