the issue, both the same in the moment, of ecstasy, light fused in
darkness and darkness fused in light, as in the rosy snow above
the twilight.

But in the monks it was not ecstasy, in them it was neutrality, the
under earth. Transcendent, above the shadowed, twilit earth was the rosy
snow of ecstasy. But spreading far over us, down below, was the
neutrality of the twilight, of the monks. The flesh neutralizing the
spirit, the spirit neutralizing the flesh, the law of the average
asserted, this was the monks as they paced backward and forward.

The moon climbed higher, away from the snowy, fading ridge, she became
gradually herself. Between the roots of the olive tree was a rosy-tipped
daisy just going to sleep. I gathered it and put it among the frail,
moony little bunch of primroses, so that its sleep should warm the rest.
Also I put in some little periwinkles, that were very blue, reminding me
of the eyes of the old woman.

The day was gone, the twilight was gone, and the snow was invisible as I
came down to the side of the lake. Only the moon, white and shining, was
in the sky, like a woman glorying in her own loveliness as she loiters
superbly to the gaze of all the world, looking sometimes through the
fringe of dark olive leaves, sometimes looking at her own superb,
quivering body, wholly naked in the water of the lake.

My little old woman was gone. She, all day-sunshine, would have none of
the moon. Always she must live like a bird, looking down on all the
world at once, so that it lay all subsidiary to herself, herself the
wakeful consciousness hovering over the world like a hawk, like a sleep
of wakefulness. And, like a bird, she went to sleep as the shadows came.