He saw
Winny's withered face and her withered arms that were grey like
crumbled earth, and weak as he was he shrank back farther towards the
wall. And then there came out of the mud-stiffened rags arms as white
and as shadowy as the foam on a river, and they were put about his
body, and a voice that he could hear well but that seemed to come
from a long way off said to him in a whisper: 'You will go looking
for me no more upon the breasts of women.'
'Who are you?' he said then.
'I am one of the lasting people, of the lasting unwearied Voices,
that make my dwelling in the broken and the dying, and those that
have lost their wits; and I came looking for you, and you are mine
until the whole world is burned out like a candle that is spent. And
look up now,' she said, 'for the wisps that are for our wedding are
lighted.'
He saw then that the house was crowded with pale shadowy hands, and
that every hand was holding what was sometimes like a wisp lighted
for a marriage, and sometimes like a tall white candle for the dead.
When the sun rose on the morning of the morrow Winny of the Cross
Roads rose up from where she was sitting beside the body, and began
her begging from townland to townland, singing the same song as she
walked, 'I am beautiful, I am beautiful. The birds in the air, the
moths under the leaves, the flies over the water look at me. Look at
me, perishing woods, for my body will be shining like the lake water
after you have been hurried away.
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