They were bound for the lower slopes; the grapes ripened earlier
there, the peasant woman explained, and the frosts came later.
The loaded wagons that they met were going to Arata, a wine press
in the valley beyond this nearest hill. Perhaps the Signorina
would like to go there to see the new wine foaming in the vat?
Strangers often went to see this.

Daphne's blood went singing through her veins with some new sense
of freedom and release, for the gospel of this heathen god was
working in her pulses. Wistfully her eyes wandered over the
lovely slopes with their clothing of olive and of vine, and up
and down the curling long white roads. At some turning of the
way, or at some hilltop where the road seemed to touch the blue
sky, surely she would see him coming with that look of divine
content upon his face!

Suddenly she realized that they were inside the vineyard walls,
for fragrance assailed her nostrils, fragrance of ripened grapes,
of grapes crushed under foot as the swift pickers went snipping
the full purple bunches with their shears.

"I shall see Bacchus coming next," she said to herself, but
hoping that it would not be Bacchus. "He will go singing down
the hill with the Maenads behind him, with fluttering hair and
draperies."

It was not nearly so picturesque as she had hoped, she confessed
to herself, as her thoughts came down to their customary level.
The vineyard of her dreams, with its long, trailing vines, was
not found in this country; there were only close-clipped plants