contemplation of beauty, a brooding and meditation wherein all
grosser desire is unknown and children are born to sinless parents.
In the Shi' the crime of Becuma would have been lightly considered, and
would have received none or but a nominal punishment, but in the second
world a horrid gravity attaches to such a lapse, and the retribution
meted is implacable and grim. It may be dissolution by fire, and that
can note a destruction too final for the mind to contemplate; or it may
be banishment from that sphere to a lower and worse one.
This was the fate of Becuma of the White Skin.
One may wonder how, having attained to that sphere, she could have
carried with her so strong a memory of the earth. It is certain that she
was not a fit person to exist in the Many-Coloured Land, and it is to be
feared that she was organised too grossly even for life in the Shi'.
She was an earth-woman, and she was banished to the earth.
Word was sent to the Shi's of Ireland that this lady should not be
permitted to enter any of them; from which it would seem that the
ordinances of the Shi come from the higher world, and, it might follow,
that the conduct of earth lies in the Shi'.
In that way, the gates of her own world and the innumerable doors of
Faery being closed against her, Becuma was forced to appear in the world
of men.
It is pleasant, however, notwithstanding her terrible crime and her
woeful punishment, to think how courageous she was. When she was told
her sentence, nay, her doom, she made no outcry, nor did she waste any
time in sorrow. She went home and put on her nicest clothes.
She wore a red satin smock, and, over this, a cloak of green silk out of
which long fringes of gold swung and sparkled, and she had light sandals
of white bronze on her thin, shapely feet. She had long soft hair that
was yellow as gold, and soft as the curling foam of the sea. Her eyes
were wide and clear as water and were grey as a dove's breast. Her teeth
were white as snow and of an evenness to marvel at. Her lips were thin
and beautifully curved: red lips in truth, red as winter berries and
tempting as the fruits of summer. The people who superintended her
departure said mournfully that when she was gone there would be no more
beauty left in their world.
She stepped into a coracle, it was pushed on the enchanted waters, and
it went forward, world within world, until land appeared, and her boat
swung in low tide against a rock at
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