"Give me the ruddy wine."
Together.
G. "Carlotta shall be mine!"
C. "Give me the ruddy wine!"
Assunta was visibly happy when the Signorina signified her willingness to go home. The pride of the house servant was touched by being compelled to come too closely in contact with the workers in the fields, and where is there pride like that of a peasant? But her joy was short-lived. Outside the great iron gates stood a team of beautiful fawn-colored oxen, with spotless flanks, and great, blue, patient eyes looking out from under broad foreheads. They were starting, with huge muscles quivering under their white skin, to carry a load of grapes to the wine press, the yield of this year being too great for the usual transportation on donkey back.
"Assunta, I go too," cried Daphne.
Five minutes later the Signorina, with her unwilling handmaid at her side, rode in triumph up the broad highway with the measured motion of slow oxen feet. Place had been made for them among the grape baskets, and they sat on folded blankets, Assunta's face wearing the expression of one who was a captive indeed, the Signorina's shining with simple happiness and somewhat stained by grapes.
The wine press was nothing after all but a machine, and though a certain interest attached to the great vats, hollowed out in the tufa rock, into which the new-made wine trickled, Daphne soon signified her willingness to depart. Before she left they brought her a great glass of rich red grape juice fresh from the newly crushed grapes. She touched her lips to it, then looked about her. Assunta was talking to the workman who had given it to her, and he was looking the other way. She feasted her eyes on the color of the thing she held in her hand. It was a rough glass whose shallow bowl had the old Etruscan curves of beauty, and the crimson wine caught the sunlight in a thousand ways. Bending over, she poured it out slowly on the green grass.
"A libation to Apollo," she said, not without reverence.