When it was over and won, the May Queen rose from her seat and crossed the grass to her fine lady guest.  “There are left only the prizes for this and for the boys’ race and for the best dancer.  Will you not give them, Mistress Evelyn, and so make them of more value?”

More curtsying, more complimenting, and the gold was in Evelyn’s white hand.  The trumpet blew, the drum beat, the fiddlers swung into a quick, staccato air, and Darden’s Audrey, leaving the post which she had touched some seconds in advance of the foremost of those with whom she had raced, came forward to receive the guinea.

The straight, short skirt of dull blue linen could not hide the lines of the young limbs; beneath the thin, white, sleeveless bodice showed the tint of the flesh, the rise and fall of the bosom.  The bare feet trod the grass lightly and firmly; the brown eyes looked from under the dogwood chaplet in a gaze that was serious, innocent, and unashamed.  To Audrey they were only people out of a fairy tale,—­all those gay folk, dressed in silks and with curled hair.  They lived in “great houses,” and men and women were born to till their fields, to row their boats, to doff hats or curtsy as they passed.  They were not real; if you pricked them they would not bleed.  In the mountains that she remembered as a dream there were pale masses of bloom far up among the cliffs; very beautiful, but no more to be gained than the moon or than rainbow gold.  She looked at the May party before which she had been called much as, when a child, she had looked at the gorgeous, distant bloom,—­not without longing, perhaps, but indifferent, too, knowing that it was beyond her reach.

When the gold piece was held out to her, she took it, having earned it; when the little speech with which the lady gave the guinea was ended, she was ready with her curtsy and her “Thank you, ma’am.”  The red came into her cheeks because she was not used to so many eyes upon her, but she did not blush for her bare feet, nor for her dress that had slipped low over her shoulder, nor for the fact that she had run her swiftest five times around the Maypole, all for the love of a golden guinea, and for mere youth and pure-minded ignorance, and the springtime in the pulses.

The gold piece lay within her brown fingers a thought too lightly, for as she stepped back from the row of gentlefolk it slid from her hand to the ground.  A gentleman, sitting beside the lady who had spoken to her, stooped, and picking up the money gave it again into her hand.  Though she curtsied to him, she did not look at him, but turned away, glad to be quit of all the eyes, and in a moment had slipped into the crowd from which she had come.  It was midday, and old Israel, the fisherman, who had brought her and the Widow Constance’s Barbara up the river in his boat, would be going back with the tide.  She was not loath to leave:  the green meadow, the gaudy Maypole, and the music were good, but the silence on the river, the shadow of the brooding forest, the darting of the fish hawk, were better.