She stood a few steps, erect, in front of the sun-coloured woman, and eyed her shrewdly.
"But how beautiful you are, you!" she said coolly, almost cynically. "There is your husband."
"My husband!" cried Juliet.
The old woman gave a shrewd bark of a little laugh, the mockery of the women of the past.
"Haven't you got one, a husband, you?" she taunted.
"But where is he?" cried Juliet.
The old woman glanced over her shoulder.
"He was following me," she said. "But he will not have found the path." And she gave another little bark of a laugh.
The paths were all grown high with grass and flowers and nepitella, till they were like bird-trails in an eternally wild place. Strange, the vivid wildness of the old places of civilisation, a wildness that is not gaunt.
Juliet looked at her serving-woman with meditating eyes.