Page:Daphne, an Autumn Pastoral.djvu/76

 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.

"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