How quiet she sat! moving not so much as a finger, with her large dark eyes fixed on the floor, and her thoughts like restless sea-birds flying here, there, everywhere; now skimming the Past, now soaring into the Future, finally gathering out of all quarters to settle themselves on the Present. From the moment when Katerfelto, or the Patron, as she called him, left the room, she seemed to have entered on a new life, to have risen in her own esteem, to have accepted responsibilities of which she was proud, to have become a gentler, fairer, softer being, more susceptible to pleasure and to pain. She only knew there was a great change; she did not know that she was passing into Fairy Land by the gate through which there is no return. Behind her lay rugged mountain and dreary moor, paths that soil and blister weary feet, barren uplands yielding scanty harvest in return for daily toil, a scorching sun, a drenching rain, mocking winds that whirl, and buffet, and moan. Before her opened the dazzling vistas of a magic region: gleaming rivers, golden skies, velvet lawns fretted with gems, bending flowers laden with perfume; glade and thicket, field and forest bathed in glows of unearthly beauty, rich in tints of unearthly splendour, teeming with fruits of unearthly hues. Would she not enter in and rest? Would she not reach forth her hand to gather, and smell, and taste? Had she not wild longings, vague curiosity, unreasonable daring? Was she not a woman to the core? How could she tell that the Fairy Land was a glamour, the lustre a delusion, the beauty a snare? that serpents were coiling in the grass, that poison lurked in the flowers, that the fruits turned to dust and ashes on the lip? How could she foresee the time when she would yearn and strive and pray to get back to the outer world? In vain! Those who have once passed its gate and tasted the fruits in that fairy garden have to do with middle earth no more. Their phantoms may indeed remain among us, but themselves are far away in the enchanted country, pacing their weary round without a respite, fulfilling their endless penance in the listless apathy of despair.