some man-mocking deity, or power of the air, happened to be
looking on, he would breathe life and intelligence into it,
and send it, or her, abroad to mix with human kind and
complicate their affairs. For she would seem a woman and
would be like some women we have known, beautiful with blue
flower-like eyes, pale gold or honey-coloured hair; very white
of skin, Leightonian, almost diaphanous, so delicate as to
make all other skins appear coarse and made of clay. And with
her beauty and a mysterious sweetness not of the heart, since
no heart there would be in that mist-cold body, she would draw
all hearts, ever inspiring, but never satisfying passion, her
beauty and alluring smiles being but the brightness of a cloud
on which the sun is shining.

Birds, driven by the fog to that sunlit spot, were all about
me in incredible numbers. Rooks and daws were congregating on
the bushes, where their black figures served to intensify the
red-gold tints of the foliage. At intervals the entire vast
cawing multitude simultaneously rose up with a sound as
of many waters, and appeared now at last about to mount up
into the blue heavens, to float circling there far above the
world as they are accustomed to do on warm windless days in
autumn. But in a little while their brave note would change
to one of trouble; the sight of that immeasurable whiteness
covering so much of the earth would scare them, and led by
hundreds of clamouring daws they would come down again to
settle once more in black masses on the shining yellow trees.

Close by a ploughed field of about forty acres was the
camping-ground of an army of peewits; they were travellers