in the presence of the moon, nor may we dare to think
in her bailiwick, or the Jealous One will surely afflict us. I think
that she is not benevolent but malign, and that her mildness is a cloak
for many shy infamies. I think that beauty tends to become frightful as
it becomes perfect, and that, if we could see it comprehendingly, the
extreme of beauty is a desolating hideousness, and that the name
of ultimate, absolute beauty is Madness. Therefore men should seek
loveliness rather than beauty, and so they would always have a friend
to go beside them, to understand and to comfort them, for that is the
business of loveliness: but the business of beauty--there is no person
at all knows what that is. Beauty is the extreme which has not yet swung
to and become merged in its opposite. The poets have sung of this beauty
and the philosophers have prophesied of it, thinking that the beauty
which passes all understanding is also the peace which passeth
understanding; but I think that whatever passes understanding, which
is imagination, is terrible, standing aloof from humanity and from
kindness, and that this is the sin against the Holy Ghost, the great
Artist. An isolated perfection is a symbol of terror and pride, and
it is followed only by the head of man, but the heart winces from it
aghast, cleaving to that loveliness which is modesty and righteousness.
Every extreme is bad, in order that it may swing to and fertilize its
equally horrible opposite."

Thus, speaking more to herself than to the children, the Thin Woman
beguiled the way. The moon had brightened as she spoke, and on either
side of the path, wherever there was a tree or a rise in the ground,
a black shadow was crouching tensely watchful, seeming as if it might
spring into terrible life at a bound. Of these shadows the children
became so fearful that the Thin Woman forsook the path and adventured on
the open hillside, so that in a short time the road was left behind and
around them stretched the quiet slopes in the full shining of the moon.

When they had walked for a long time the children became sleepy; they
were unused to being awake in the night, and as there was no place where
they could rest, and as it was evident that they could not walk much
further, the Thin Woman grew anxious. Already Brigid had made a
tiny, whimpering sound, and Seumas had followed this with a sigh, the
slightest prolongation of which might have trailed into a sob, and when
children