I was there at midnight, a mild radiant night of late April. There were sheep at graze there, for though it was darkish under the three-quarter moon, I was used to the dark, and could see them, a woolly mass, quietly feeding close together. I saw no shepherd anywhere; but I remember that his dog sat on his haunches apart, watching them. He was prick-eared, bright-eyed; he grinned and panted intensely. I didn't then know why he was so excited, but very soon I did. I became aware, gradually, that a woman stood among the sheep. She had not been there when I first saw them, I am sure; nor did I see her approach them or enter their school. Yet there she was in the midst of them, seen now by me as she had evidently been seen for some time by the dog, seen, I suppose, by the sheep--at any rate she stood in the midst of them, as I say, with her hand actually upon the shoulder of one of them--but not feared or doubted by any soul of us. The dog was vividly interested, but did not budge; the sheep went on feeding; I stood bolt upright, watching. I knew her the moment I saw her. She was the exquisitely formed, slim and glowing creature I had seen before, when she launched herself into the night as a God of Homer--Hermes or Thetis--launched out from Olympus' top into the sea--"ἐξ αἰθέρος ἔμπεσε πόντῳ," and words fail me to describe the perfection of her being, a radiant simulacrum of our own, the inconscient self-sufficiency, the buoyancy and freedom which she showed me. You may sometimes see boys at their maddest tip of expectation stand waiting as she now stood, quivering on the extreme edge of adventure; yet even in their case there is a consciousness of well being, a kind of rolling of anticipation upon the palate, a getting of the flavours beforehand. That involves a certain dissipation of activity; but here all was concentrated. The whole nature of the creature was strung to one issue only, to that point when she could fling headlong into activity--an activity in which every fibre and faculty would be used. A comparison of the fairy-kind with human beings is never successful, because into our images of human beings we always import self-consciousness. They know what they are doing. Fairies do not. But wait a moment; there is a reason. Human creatures, I think, know what they are doing only too well, because performance never agrees with desire. They know what they are doing because it is never exactly what they meant to do, or what they 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.