he gradually loses her
fairy-power and her children have none of it or only vestiges--so much
as the children of a genius may perhaps exhibit. I am not able to say
how long the fairy-wife's ability to resume her own nature lasts. _The
Forsaken Merman_ occurs to one; but I doubt if Miranda King, at the
time, say, of her son's marriage with Mabilla, could have gone back to
the sea. Sometimes, as in Mrs. Ventris's case, fairy-wives play truant
for a night or for a season. I have reason to believe that not
uncommon. The number of fairy-wives in England alone is very
considerable--over a quarter of a million, I am told.]

But with regard to their love-business among themselves it is a very
different matter, so far as I can understand it. The fairy child is
initiated at the age of puberty and is then competent to pair. He is
not long in selecting his companion; nor does she often seem to refuse
him, though mating is done by liking in all cases and has nothing
whatever to do with the parents. It must be remembered, of course,
that they are subject to the primitive law from which man only has
freed himself. They frequently fight for the possession of the female,
or measure their powers against each other; and she goes with the
victor or the better man.[12] I don't know any case where the advance
has been made by the female. Pairing may be for a season or for a
period or for life. I don't think there is any rule; but in all cases
of separation the children are invariably divided--the males to the
father, the females to the mother. After initiation the children owe
no allegiance to their parents. Love with them is a wild and wonderful
rapture in all its manifestations, and without regard necessarily to
sex. I never, in my life, saw a more beautiful expression of it than
in the two females whom I saw greet and embrace on Parliament Hill.
Their motions to each other, their looks and their clinging were
beyond expression tender and swift. Nor shall I ever forget the pair
of Oreads in the snow, of whose meeting I have said as much as is
possible in a previous chapter. It must be remembered that I am
dealing with an order of Nature which knows nothing of our shames and
qualms, which is not only unconscious of itself but unconscious of
anything but its immediate desire; but I am dealing with it to the
understanding of a very different order, to whom it is not enough to
do a thing which seems good in its own eyes, but requisite also to