One with another. A heavy heart and a hidden face, Mother, my mother. —Swinburne A girl is grown like a flower in the house of her kindred. She is nurtured for her hues and perfume. At the blossoming she will be plucked from her native soil and planted elsewhere. In other earth she will give fruit, fade, wither, and finish. This is all the usefulness of such a flower, the well-born girl among the great houses of Paradys. Helise la Valle knew, as she had learnt her alphabet and orisons, that this was her destiny. Indeed, she had looked forward to the event of her transplanting, once she became conscious of the future. Rather than be afraid, it seemed to her child-mind like the festival of Christmas or the New Year, a season of celebration, dressing-up, the giving and receiving of gifts. Late to these images came a dreamlike icon: the bridegroom. It was not until her adolescence, actually her saint’s day, in her twelfth year, that this procrastinate shape at last stepped forward to overwhelm, to crush all the others, and fill her with pervasive dread.
