Behind and somewhat below Florian were the turrets and banners of Brunbelois, a place now disenchanted, but a fair place wherein the old time yet lingered. Before him the bare hillside sank sheer and unbroken, to the far-off tree-tops of Acaire: and beyond leagues of foliage you could even see, not a great number of miles away, but quite two miles below you, the open country of Poictesme, which you saw not as anything real and tangible but as a hazed blending of purples and of all the shades that green may have in heaven. Florian seemed to stand at the top of the world: and with him, high as his heart, stood Melior.... And it was a queer thing that he, who always noticed people’s clothes, and who tended to be very critical about apparel, could never afterward, in thinking about this extraordinary morning, recollect one color which Melior wore. He remembered only a sense of many interwoven brilliancies, as if the brightness of the summer sea and of the clouds of sunset and of all the stars were blended here to veil this woman’s body. She went appareled with the splendor of a queen of the old days, she who was the most beautiful of women that have lived in any day. For, if so far as went her body, one could think dazedly of analogues, nowhere was there anything so bright and lovely as was this woman’s countenance. And it was to the end that he might see the face of Melior raised now to him, he knew, that Florian was born. All living had been the prologue to this instant: God had made the world in order that Florian might stand here, with Melior, at the top of the world. And it seemed to Florian that his indiscretions in the way of removing people from this dear world, and of excursions into strange beds, and of failures to attend mass regularly, had become alienate to the man who waited before Melior. All that was over and done with: he had climbed past all that in his ascent to this bright and windy place. Here, in this inconceivably high place, was the loveliness seen once and never forgotten utterly, the loveliness which had made seem very cheap and futile the things that other men wanted. Now this loveliness was, for the asking, his: and Florian found his composure almost shaken, he suspected that the bearing suitable to a Duke of Puysange was touched with unbecoming ardors. He feared that logic could not climb so high as he had climbed. Besides, it might be, he had climbed too near to heaven. For nothing veiled this unimaginably high place: God, seeing him thus plainly, would be envious. That was the thought which Florian put hastily out of mind.... He parted his lips once or twice. This was, he joyously reflected, quite ridiculous. A woman waited: and Florian de Puysange could not speak. Then words came, with a sort of sobbing. “My princess, there was a child who viewed you once in your long sleeping. The child’s heart moved with desires which did not know their aim. It is not that child who comes to you.”