trained to stakes. But there was a sound of talking and of
laughter, and the pickers, moving among the even lines in their
gay rags, lent motley color to the picture. There was scarlet of
waistcoat or of petticoat, blue and saffron of jacket and apron,
and a blending of all bright tints in the kerchiefs above the
hair. The rich dark soil made a background for it all: the
moving figures, the clumps of pale green vine leaves, the great
baskets of piled-up grapes.

Assunta was chattering eagerly with a young man who smiled, and
took off his hat to the Signorina, and said something polite,
with a show of white teeth. Daphne did not know what it was, but
she took the pair of scissors that were given her, and began to
cut bunch after bunch of grapes. If she had realized that the
peasant woman, her heart full of shame, had confessed to the
overseer her young lady's whim, and had won permission for her to
join the ranks of the pickers, she might have been less happy.
As it was, she noticed nothing, but diligently cut her grapes,
piling them, misty with bloom, flecked with gold sunlights, in
her basket. Then she found a flat stone and sat on it, watching
the workers and slowly eating a great bunch of grapes. She had
woven green leaves into the cord of her red felt hat; the
peasants as they passed smiled back to her in swift recognition
of her friendliness and charm.

Her thoughts flamed up within her with sudden anger at herself.
This vivid joy in the encompassing beauty had but one meaning: it
was her sense of the glad presence of this new creature, man or
god, who seemed continually with her, were he near or far.