hey wanted to do. Now, with fairies, desire to do and
performance are instinctive and simultaneous. If they think, they
think in action. In this they are far more like animals than human
creatures, although the form in which they appear to us, their shape
and colouring are like ours, enhanced and refined. Here now stood this
creature in the semblance of a woman glorified, quivering; and so,
perched high on his haunches, sat the shepherd's dog, and no one could
look at the two and not see their kinship. _Arriere-pensee_ they had
none--and all's said in that. They were shameless, and we are full of
shame. There's the difference; and it is a gulf.

After a while of this quivering suspense she gave a low call, a long
mellow and tremulous cry which, gentle as it was, startled by its
suddenness, as the unexpected call of a water-fowl out of the reeds of
a pond makes the heart jump toward the throat. It was like some bird's
call, but I know of no bird's with which to get a close comparison. It
had the soft quality, soft yet piercing, of a redshank's, but it
shuddered like an owl's. And she held it on as an owl does. But it was
very musical, soft and open-throated, and carried far. It was answered
from a distance, first by a single voice; but then another took it up,
and another; and then another. Slowly so the soft night was filled
with musical cries which quavered about me as fitfully as fire-flies
gleam and glance in all quarters of a garden of olive-trees. It was
enchantment to the ear, a ravishing sound; but it was my eyes which
claimed me now, for soon I saw them coming from all quarters. Or
rather, I saw them there, for I can't say definitely that I saw any
one of them on the way. It is truer to say that I looked and they were
there. Where had been one were now two. Now two were five; now five
were a company; now the company was a host. I have no idea how many
there were of them at any time; but when they joined hands and set to
whirling in a ring they seemed to me to stretch round Parliament Hill
in an endless chain.

How can I be particular about them? They were of both sexes--that was
put beyond doubt; they were garbed as the first of them in something
translucent and grey. It had been quite easy in the lamplight to see
the bare form of the woman whom I first saw in Gaylord's Rents. It was
plain to me that her companions were in the same kind of dress. I
don't think they had girdles; I think their arms and legs were