The mentioning of that undoubted marriage brings me to the question of sex. There is, of course, not the slightest doubt about it. Mrs. Ventris was a fairy wife. Mrs. Ventris was a puzzle to me for a good many years--in fact until Despoina explained to me many things. For Mrs. Ventris had a permanent human shape, and spoke as freely as you or I. I thought at one time that she might be the offspring of a mixed marriage, like Elsie Marks (whose mother, by the way, was another case of the sort); but in fact Mrs. Ventris and Mrs. Marks were both fairy wives, and the wood-girl, Mabilla King, whose case I am going to deal with was another. But this particular relationship is one which my explanation of fairy apparitions does not really cover: for marriage implies a permanent accessibility (to put it so) of two normally inaccessible natures; and parentage implies very much more. That, indeed, implies what the Christians call Miracle; but it is quite beyond dispute. I have a great number of cases ready to my hand, and shall deal at large with all of them in the course of this essay, in which fairies have had intercourse with mortals. It is by no means the fact that the wife is always of the fairy-kind. My own experience at C---- shall prove that. But I must content myself with mentioning the well-known case of Mary Wellwood who was wife to a carpenter near Ashby de la Zouche, and was twice taken by a fairy and twice recovered. She had children in each of her states of being, and on one recorded occasion her two families met. It appears to be a law that the wife takes the nature of the husband, or as much of it as she can, and it is important to remark that _in all cases_ the children are of the husband's nature, fairy or mortal as he may happen to be. "Nature," Despoina told me, "follows the male." So far as fairies are concerned it seems certain that union with mortals runs in families or clans, if one may so describe their curious relationships to each other. There were five sisters of the wood in one of the Western departments of France (Lot-et-Garonne, I think), who all married men: two of them married two brothers. Apart they led the decorous lives of the French middle class, but when they were together it was a sight to see! A curious one, and to us, with our strong associations of ideas, that tremendous hand which memory has upon our heart-strings, a poignant one. For they had lost their powers, but not their impulses. It was a case of _si vieillesse pouvait_. I suppose they may have appeared to some chance wayfarer, getting a glimpse of them at their gambols between the poplar stems of the road, or in the vistas of the hazel-brakes, as a company of sprightly matrons on a frolic. To the Greeks foolishness! And be sure that such an observer would shrug them out of mind. My own impression is that these ladies were perfectly happy, that they had nothing of that _maggior' dolore_ which we mortals know, and for which our joys have so often to pay.