Adhelmar's room it had better be, I suppose, though I had meant to have
it turned out. But as for bigamy and being your wife," she concluded more
cheerfully, "it seems to me the least said the soonest mended. It is to
nobody's interest to rake up those foolish bygones, so far as I can see."

"Adelaide, you profane equally love, which is divine, and marriage, which
is a holy sacrament."

"Florian, do you really love Adelaide de Nointel?" asked this terrible
woman. "And now that I am free to listen to your proposals, do you wish
to marry me?"

"Well, no," said Florian: "for, as I have just said; you are no longer
the same person."

"Why, then, you see for yourself. So do you quit talking nonsense about
immortality and sacraments."

"But, still," cried Florian, "love is immortal. Yes, I repeat to you,
precisely as I told Tiburce, love is immortal."

Then says Dame Melicent, nodding her shriveled old head: "When I was
young, and was served by nimbler senses and desires, and was housed in
brightly colored flesh, there were a host of men to love me. Minstrels
yet tell of the men that loved me, and of how many tall men were slain
because of their love for me, and of how in the end it was Perion who won
me. For the noblest and the most faithful of all my lovers was Perion of
the Forest, and through tempestuous years he sought me with a love that
conquered time and chance: and so he won me. Thereafter he made me a fair
husband, as husbands go. But I might not stay the girl he had loved, nor