beautiful young men, and of queen-women, that were not going from him
but coming towards him and past him, and their faces were full of
tenderness for all their proud looks, and were very pale and worn, as
if they were seeking and ever seeking for high sorrowful things. And
shadowy arms were stretched out of the mist as if to take hold of
them, but could not touch them, for the quiet that was about them
could not be broken. And before them and beyond them, but at a
distance as if in reverence, there were other shapes, sinking and
rising and coming and going, and Hanrahan knew them by their whirling
flight to be the Sidhe, the ancient defeated gods; and the shadowy
arms did not rise to take hold of them, for they were of those that
can neither sin nor obey. And they all lessened then in the distance,
and they seemed to be going towards the white door that is in the
side of the mountain.

The mist spread out before him now like a deserted sea washing the
mountains with long grey waves, but while he was looking at it, it
began to fill again with a flowing broken witless life that was a
part of itself, and arms and pale heads covered with tossing hair
appeared in the greyness. It rose higher and higher till it was level
with the edge of the steep rock, and then the shapes grew to be
solid, and a new procession half lost in mist passed very slowly with
uneven steps, and in the midst of each shadow there was something
shining in the starlight. They came nearer and nearer, and Hanrahan
saw that they also were lovers, and that they had heart-shaped
mirrors instead of hearts, and they were looking and ever looking on
their own faces in one another's mirrors. They passed on, sinking
downward as they passed, and other shapes rose in their place, and
these did not keep side by side, but followed after one another,
holding out wild beckoning arms, and he saw that those who were