But all this was spilt milk. What it came to in the upshot was that Florian, through his infatuation for Melior, was already in a fair way to lose his most intimate and powerful friend and his only legitimate brother. It was a nuisance, for Florian disliked annoying either one of them, and thus to be burdened with the need of bereaving yourself of both appeared a positive imposition. But we cannot have all things as we desire them in this world, his common-sense assured him: and, in the main, as has been said, the incidental disappointments, now that he had attained his life’s desire, were tepid and not really very deep. For Melior was beautiful; after months of intimacy and fond research he could find no flaw in her beauty: and in other respects she proved to be as acceptable a wife as any of his own marrying that he had ever had. If she was not always reasonable, if sometimes indeed she seemed obtuse, and if she nagged a little now and then, it was, after all, what past experience had led him to expect alike in marriage and in liaisons. The rapture which he had known at first sight of her, the rapture of the mountain-top, was not, he assured himself, a delusion of which he had ever expected permanence.... “But this remarkably carved staff, my darling—?” “Oh, it was one of my sister Mélusine’s old things. I would not be in the least surprised if it were magical—And while we are speaking about sisters, Florian, I do wish that black-faced one of yours would not look at me so hard and then shrug, because she has done it twice, in quite a personal way—” “Marie-Claire is a strange woman, my pet.” But that fretted him. He knew so well why Marie-Claire had shrugged.... No, he had never, really, expected the rapture of the mountain-top to be permanent. Besides, he need not expect permanency of Melior. It was sad, of course, that when she had borne him a child, the child must be disposed of, and the mother must vanish, in accordance with Florian’s agreement with Janicot. But there was always some such condition attached to marriage between a mortal and any of the Léshy, or some abstention set like a trap whereinto the unwary mortal was sure to flounder, and so lose the more than mortal helpmate. The union must always, in one way or another, prove transitory, as was shown by the sad history of the matrimonial ventures of Melior’s own sister, and of the knight Helias, and by many other honorable old precedents.