“It is not known,” said she, “that the fairies seldom dance for joy, but for sadness that they have been expelled from the sweet dawn, and therefore their midnight revels are only ceremonies to remind them of their happy state in the morning of the world before thoughtful curiosity and self-righteous moralities drove them from the kind face of the sun to the dark exile of midnight. It is strange that we may not be angry while looking on the moon. Indeed, no mere appetite or passion of any kind dare become imperative in the presence of the Shining One; and this, in a more limited degree, is true also of every form of beauty; for there is something in an absolute beauty to chide away the desires of materiality and yet to dissolve the spirit in ecstasies of fear and sadness. Beauty has no liking for Thought, but will send terror and sorrow on those who look upon her with intelligent eyes. We may neither be angry nor gay 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.