176 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



not only because but a part of it emerged from the shell 

 of her hat, but because the spirit that emanated from it 

 was more than the colour and features and so much in 

 harmony with the sea and crag and moor and dolmen 

 of her land. It is evading an insuperable difficulty to say 

 that this spirit was not so much human as fay. It was 

 the spirit of which her milky complexion, the bright 

 black eyes, white teeth and fine red lips of her readily 

 smiling and naively watching fearless face, her slender 

 form, her light and rapid movements upon small feet, 

 were only the more obvious expressions. Her spirit 

 danced before her — not quite visibly, not quite audibly — 

 as she moved or spoke or merely smiled; if it could have 

 been seen it would have been a little singing white flame 

 changing to blue and crimson in its perpetual flickering. 

 It was a spirit of laughter, of laughter unquenchable since 

 the beginning of time, of laughter in spite of and because 

 of all things, the laughter of life like a jewel in desolate 

 places. It was a spirit most ancient and yet childlike, 

 birdlike : it belonged to a world outside any which other 

 human beings ever seemed to touch, but the laughter in 

 it made it friendly, for it was far deeper than humour, it 

 was gaiety of heart. Her goings to and fro on those light 

 feet had the grace, quickness, suddenness of a bird, of a 

 wren that slips from twig to twig and jets out its needle 

 of song, of a moorhen flicking its tail and hooting sharply. 

 Her laugh startled and delighted like the laugh of the 

 woodpecker as it leaps across the glades — like the whistling 

 of birds up amongst the dark clouds and the moon. But 

 most of all she called to mind the meadow pipit of her 

 own crags, that rises from green ledges out over the sea 

 and then, falling slantwise with body curved like a 



