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man elderly and superlatively uncomely, as was thought correct in the case of a young girl.
    One morning, as they sat in the la Valle vine court, Helise spoke to the priest.
    “My betrothed is Lord Heros, the heir of House d’Uscaret.” It was not a question, nor did the priest reply. Until now he had somehow managed not to name the name of the bridegroom, though referring to him always deferentially. “Spiritual father,” said Helise, looking only at her knotted hands, “when I was a child, I was frightened by tales of evil that had to do with—’
    “This isn’t the hour to dwell on such foolishness,” said the priest. “You must think only of your duties as a wife. Be wary, my daughter, that you don’t interpose such nasty and aimless chatter.”
    “But spiritual father, these tales concerned my husband.”
    The priest looked as steadily upon the vines as Helise upon her hands. Neither met the other’s eye.
    Tut superstition from your mind, my daughter.”
    “But father—I’m afraid.”
    The priest inhaled and expelled a noisy breath laden with garlic and kitchen wine. He said, “There have been stories told of d’Uscaret, by the ignorant and stupid, notions instigated by enemies of that valiant house.” Then he paused, as if girding himself, and added, “What have you heard?”
    Helise stammered that she could recall no details.
    At that, the priest seemed happier.
    “If you can remember no absolute, how can you fear?”
    Helise attempted to confide that she did not know, yet fear persisted.
    But the priest would have none of that. He rebuked her with sins of self-attention and untrust. Would her loving parents give her over to any tainted man? And did she not have faith in her God to protect her?
    Helise sat quiescent under this garlicky lesson, until he left off and went on with the others.
    It.appeared to her that all with whom she now had dealings, all that were caught up in the train of the approaching marriage, adopted an odd manner. Faces she had been familiar with now looked like masks, and voices did not run .along but went choppily, with words left unsaid. And how often she saw the hands rising and falling upon the breasts, marking there a cross. Did the maids stare nervously sideways at her, as if at one who may be infected with plague? Did her aunt’s singing bird go dumb in its cage at her passing?
    The shadow is on me. Am I going to die?
    She knew nothing of the real rites of marriage, nothing of sex beyond the untutored flarings of her own body, which she had obliquely discovered by then were dangerous, as they might lead her into unchastity.
    Connubiality was this: the husband lay beside his wife all night in the same bed. Sometimes (so certain cousins had assured her) he kissed his wife, even her nakedness, and some men, though surely they were depraved, set their hands on a woman’s private places. Helise had never even seen cats mating. Though once she had beheld a cat in labour, and was appalled. Later on, hearing her brother’s wife shrieking in childbirth, Helise had had some idea why. The angels of God brought the baby. It was God’s will, and His will also that a woman suffer in travail, the female penance for the disobedience of Eve.
    Could it be that Heros d’Uscaret would perpetrate on his bride some alarming foul act, something worse even than the embarrassing things that apparently quite normally went on, these lewd kissings and touchings -already mentioned.
    Ten nights before her wedding-night, Helise recalled precisely what her maid had said to her: “Satan claims them—shape-changers— things under the skin .”
    She woke in a bath of sweat, and bit her hands with terror.
    Paradys turned out to recognise the wedding processions of the houses la Valle and d’Uscaret, and to catch the sweetmeats and small money retainers might throw the rabble. They were able to watch besides many scores of men on fine horses, dazzling in brocade and gems, some quantities of