We are contemplating, then, a realm, nay, a world, where anarchy is the rule, and anarchy in the widest sense. The fairies are of a world where Right and Wrong don't obtain, where Possible and Impossible are the only finger-posts at cross-roads; for the Gods themselves give no moral sanction to desire and hold up no moral check. The fairies love and hate intensely; they crave and enjoy; they satisfy by kindness or cruelty; they serve or enslave each other; they give life or take it as their instinct, appetite or whim may be. But there is this remarkable thing to be noted, that when a thing is dead they cannot be aware of its existence. For them it is not, it is as if it had never been. Ruth, therefore, is unknown, their emotions are maimed to that serious extent that they cannot regret, cannot pity, cannot weep for sorrow. They weep through rage, but sorrow they know not. Similarly, they cannot laugh for joy. Laughing with them is an expression of pleasure, but not of joy. Here then, at least, we have the better of them. I for one would not exchange my privilege of pity or my consolation of pure sorrow for all their transcendent faculty. It is often said that fairies of both sexes seek our kind because we know more of the pleasure of love than they do. Since we know more of the griefs of it that is likely to be true; but it is a great mistake to suppose that they are unsusceptible to the great heights and deeps of the holy passion. It is to make the vulgar confusion between the passion and the expression of it. They are capable of the greatest devotion to the beloved, of the greatest sacrifice of all--the sacrifice of their own nature. These fairy-wives of whom I have been speaking--Miranda King, Mabilla By-the-Wood--when they took upon them our nature, and with it our power of backward-looking and forward-peering, was what they could remember, was what they must dread, no sacrifice? They could have escaped at any moment, mind you, and been free.[11] Resuming their first nature they would have lost regret. But they did not. Love was their master. There are many cases of the kind. With men it is otherwise. I have mentioned Mary Wellwood, the carpenter's wife, twice taken by a fairy and twice recaptured. The last time she was brought back to Ashby-de-la-Zouche she died there. But there is reason for this. A woman marrying a male fairy gets some, but not all, of the fairy attributes, while her children have them in full at birth. She bears them with all the signs of human motherhood, and directly they are born her earthly rights and duties cease. She does not nurse them and she can only rise in the air when they are with her. That means that she cannot go after them if they are long away from her, unless she can get another fairy to keep her company. By the same mysterious law she can only conceal herself, or doff her appearance, with the aid of a fairy. For some time after her abduction or surrender her husband has to nourish her by breathing