“For my grey heron, whom I love, and who loves me so much. And yet it is love that divides us, for I am still troubled with a human heart, and often it aches with sorrow because all the love in it can never be fully understood or shared by my heron; and I have my human voice left, and that gives me a hundred things to say all day, for which there is no word in herons’ language, and so he cannot understand them. Therefore these things only make a gulf between him and me. For all the other grey herons in the pools there is happiness, but not for me who have too big a heart between my wings.” Her mother said softly, “Wait, wait, little heron-daughter, and it shall be well with you!” Then she went to the Fairy and said, “My daughter’s heart is lonely among the reeds, for the grey heron’s love covers but half of it. Give her some companions of her own kind that her hours may become merry again!” So the Fairy took and turned five of the Princess’s lady’s-maids into herons, and sent them down to the pool. The five herons stood each on one leg in the shallows of the pool, and cried all day long; and their tears fell down into the water and frightened away the fish that came their way. For they had human hearts that cried out to be let go. “O, cruel, cruel,” they wept, whenever the heron-Princess approached, “see what we suffer because of you, and what they have made of us for your sake!” The Princess came to her mother and said, “Dear mother, take them away, for their cry wearies me, and the pool is bitter with their tears! They only awake the human part of my heart that wants to sleep; presently, may be, if it is let alone, it will forget itself.” Her mother said, “It is my coming every day also that keeps it awake.” The Princess answered, “This sorrow belongs to my birthright; you must still come; but for the others, let the Fairy take them away.” So the Fairy came and released the five lady’s-maids whom she had changed into herons. And they came up out of the water, stripping themselves of their grey feather-skins and throwing them back into the pool. The Fairy said, “You foolish maids, you have thrown away a gift that you should have valued; these skins you could have kept and held as heirlooms in your family.” The five maids answered, “We want to forget that there are such things as herons in the world!”