All men adore her; yet all she deceives, and many are the ways of her deception. Most often she lures her lover into the presence of some earthly maid, and blends herself incomprehensibly with the body of that maid, and works such sudden glamour that the human gaze becomes divine,—that the human limbs shine through their raiment. But presently the luminous haunter detaches herself from the mortal, and leaves her dupe to wonder at the mockery of sense.
No man can describe her, though nearly all men have some time tried to do so. Pictured she cannot be,—since her beauty itself is a ceaseless becoming, multiple to infinitude, and tremulous with perpetual quickening, as with flowing of light.
There is a story, indeed, that thousands of years ago some marvellous sculptor was able to fix in stone a single remembrance of her. But this doing became for many the cause of sorrow supreme; and the Gods decreed, out of compassion, that to no other mortal should ever be given power to work the like wonder. In these years we can worship only;—we cannot portray.
But who is she?—what is she?... Ah! that is what I wanted you to ask. Well, she has never had a name; but I shall call her a tree-spirit.
The Japanese say that you can exorcise a tree-spirit,—if you are cruel enough to do it,—simply by cutting down her tree.
But you cannot exorcise the Spirit of whom I speak,—nor ever cut down her tree.
For her tree is the measureless, timeless, billion-branching Tree of Life,—even the World-Tree, Yggdrasil, whose roots are in Night and Death, whose head is above the Gods.
Seek to woo her—she is Echo. Seek to clasp her—she is Shadow. But her smile will haunt you into the hour of dissolution and beyond,—through numberless lives to come.
And never will you return her smile,—never, because of that which it awakens within you,—the pain that you cannot understand.