She questioned as she listened; would have me be precise.
She had never been any nearer to Deep Fern than the place where I had found her the second day of the Meet. Could she reach it easiest from here by way of Leaping Water or otherwise? Just how far was the Laurel Bank from the long meadow, and how could one get at it? I could see the purpose grow in her to strike that trail and follow it to whatever end. She listened and hardened.
“Tell me well how she looks,” she said, “so that if I find this flagrant girl I may not mistake her,” and I saw her blench as I named the points of the Ward’s beauty. She jerked and quivered. Little sentences escaped from her like phrases of a delirium, of the utterance of which I think she was unconscious.
“Little fair hands,” she said, “a trivial heart ... hair of two colors ... a snare, a snare ... a crumpled lip goes with a false tongue ...” Her jealousy kept pace. “Kill her, would they?... Let them ... does he think to keep her who could not keep her word? Does he lie safely with this false Ward while his people wait for him at——”
“Stop!” I said. “I have told you all that concerns you personally, as one woman to another. But I advise you, I am on the side of the Outliers, if you say anything of value to them I shall not keep it.”
She bit her lip.
“What do I know of what the people do in my absence, or where they foregather? It is of him I think; does he imagine me waiting in my house like a faithful wife——”
She threw out her arms, rocking on her knees.
... “Long, oh long, have I been gathering lilies!...”
I do not know whether she uttered these words in the delirium of her jealousy, or if something in the anguished gesture sent the refrain of Ravenutzi’s song sounding through and through me. I heard it shaken like an organ somewhere above the sound of tears.