"I'm as foolish as a sixteen-year-old girl," she murmured,
fingering the grapes in the basket with their setting of green
leaves, "and yet, and yet he isn't a man, really; he is only a
state of mind!"

She sat, with the cool air of autumn on her cheeks, watching the
pickers, who went with even motion up the great slope. Sometimes
there was silence on the hillside; now and then there was a
fragment of song. One gay, tripping air, started by three women
who stood idle with arms akimbo for a moment on the hillside, was
caught up and echoed back by invisible singers on the other side
of the hill. And once the red-cheeked Italian lads who were
carrying loaded baskets down toward the vineyard gates burst into
responsive singing that made her think that she had found, on the
Roman hills, some remnant of the old Bacchic music, of the
alternate strains that marked the festival of the god of wine.
It was something like this:--

Carlo. "Of all the gifts of all the gods I choose the ruddy
wine. The brimming glass shall be my lot"--

Giovanni (interrupting). "Carlotta shall be mine! "Take you the
grape, I only ask The shadow of the vine To screen Carlotta's
golden head"--

Carlo (interrupting). "Give me the ruddy wine."

Together. G. "Carlotta shall be mine!" C. "Give me the ruddy
wine!"