XII

CAITILIN NI MURRACHU was sitting alone in the little cave behind Gort na
Cloca Mora. Her companion had gone out as was his custom to walk in the
sunny morning and to sound his pipe in desolate, green spaces whence,
perhaps, the wanderer of his desire might hear the guiding sweetness. As
she sat she was thinking. The last few days had awakened her body, and
had also awakened her mind, for with the one awakening comes the other.
The despondency which had touched her previously when tending her
father's cattle came to her again, but recognizably now. She knew the
thing which the wind had whispered in the sloping field and for which
she had no name--it was Happiness. Faintly she shadowed it forth,
but yet she could not see it. It was only a pearl-pale wraith, almost
formless, too tenuous to be touched by her hands, and too aloof to be
spoken to. Pan had told her that he was the giver of happiness, but he
had given her only unrest and fever and a longing which could not be
satisfied. Again there was a want, and she could not formulate, or
even realize it with any closeness. Her new-born Thought had promised
everything, even as Pan, and it had given--she could not say that it had
given her nothing or anything. Its limits were too quickly divinable.
She had found the Tree of Knowledge, but about on every side a great
wall soared blackly enclosing her in from the Tree of Life--a wall which
her thought was unable to surmount even while instinct urged that
it must topple before her advance; but instinct may not advance when
thought has schooled it in the science of unbelief; and this wall will
not be conquered until Thought and Instinct are wed, and the first son
of that bridal will be called The Scaler of the Wall.

So, after the quiet weariness of ignorance, the unquiet weariness
of thought had fallen upon her. That travail of mind which, through
countless generations, has throed to the birth of an ecstasy, the
prophecy which humanity has sworn must be fulfilled, seeing through
whatever mists and doubtings the vision of a gaiety wherein the
innocence of the morning will not any longer be strange to our maturity.

While she was so thinking Pan returned, a little disheartened that he
had found no person to listen to his pipings. He had been seated but a
little time when suddenly, from without, a chorus of birds burst into
joyous singing. Limpid and liquid cadenzas, mellow flutings, and the
sweet treble of infancy met and d