Florian journeyed first to Amneran, and went to a very retired cottage built of oak and plaster upon a stone foundation. Here was his last hope of aid, and of succour which he might accept without any detriment to the pride of Puysange, for this was the ill spoken-of home of his half-sister, Marie-Claire Cazaio. She was alone at her spinning when he came into the room. He took her hand. He kissed it. “You told me once, dear Marie-Claire, a long while since, that in the end I would come to you in an old garden where dead leaves were falling, and would kiss your hand, and tell you I had loved you all my life. I wonder, Marie-Claire, if you remember that?” “I have forgotten,” she said, “nothing.” “You were wrong as to the garden and as to the dead leaves. But in all else you were right. This is the end, Marie-Claire. And in the end I fulfill your prophecy.” She looked at him, for no brief while, with those small darkened eyes which seemed to see beyond him. “Yes, you are speaking the truth. I had thought that when this happened it would matter. And it does not matter.” “Only one thing has mattered in all our lives, Marie-Claire. I was at Storisende last week. I remembered you and our youth.” “And were you”—she smiled faintly,—“and were you properly remorseful?” “No. I have regretted many of my doings. But I can find nowhere in me any of the highly requisite repentance for those of my actions which people would describe as criminal. I suppose it is because we of Puysange are so respectful of the notions of others that we do not commit crimes rashly. We enter into no illegal turpitude until rather careful reflection has assured us of its expediency. I, in any event, have sometimes been virtuous with unthinking levity, and with depressing upshots: but my vices, which my judgment had to endorse before prudence would venture on them, have resulted well enough. So I can regret no irregularities, and certainly not the happiness of our far-off youth.” Again Marie-Claire was in no hurry to reply. When she spoke, it was without any apparent conviction either one way or the other. “Our happiness involved, they say, considerable misdoing.” This stirred him to mild indignation. “And is love between brother and sister a misdoing? Come, Marie-Claire, but let us be logical! All scientists will tell you that endogamy is natural to mankind as long as men stay uncorrupted by over-civilization. The weight of history goes wholly one way. The Pharaohs and the Ptolemies afford, I believe, precedents that are tolerably ancient. Strabo is explicit as to the old Irish, Herodotus as to the Persians. In heaven also Osiris and Zeus and I know not how many other supreme gods have, in cherishing extreme affection for their sisters, set the example followed upon earth by the Kings of Siam and of Phœnicia, and by the Incas of Peru—” She shook that small dark head. “But, none the less—”