“I shall ask to hear that song,” added the youth. “The prize song which you made for Dryas, your brother.”
“I made no song,” she asserted, loyal to her house.
“Oh, yes, you did. All the Precinct whispers that. But I shall know, dear maid, whether the song be yours. If it came from your spirit, it will go to mine.”
Steps were heard in the lane. She cried out a low warning. Her anger swept back again that the youth should thus bring her into fear. But he was gone almost before her cry. He was among the hills.
Theria turned, dazed, from the window. There on the moon-lit floor lay flowers strewn, one bunch upon another—faded ferns, fresh anemones, violets half dry. Evidently a gift for every day. If the youth came in this fashion sooner or later someone would see him. They would punish her. Worse! They would laugh at her. A street song, a vulgar old catch, struck across her mind, one of the common gibes at women:
Always as of old——
They roast their barley sitting as of old
They on their heads bear burdens as of old—
They buy themselves sly dainties as of old—
They still secrete their lovers as of old.