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The house was empty The trunks had been sent on The ship would leave Alexandria in two nights Only a small valise remained with me On shipboard the son of the Marquis e his clothes And, of course, the violin

Gabrielle stood by the archway to the garden, slender, longlegged, beautifully angular in her white cotton garments, the hat on as always, her hair loose

Was that for , a tide that included all the losses, the dead and the undead

But it went away and the sense of sinking returned, the sense of the dreaate with or without will

It struck old, that all the old poetry makes sense when you look at one wholes of her face, her implacable little mouth

"Tell me what you need of me, Mother," I said quietly Civilized this rooiven away, probably for sale in the bazaar Gray African parrots that live to be as old as men Nicki had lived to be thirty

"Do you require money from me?"

Great beautiful flush to her face, eyes a flash of ht-blue and violet For ain her room at home Books, the damp walls, the fire Was she human then?

The brim of the hat covered her face completely for an instant as she bowed her head Inexplicably she asked:

"But where will you go?"

"To a little house in the race Dumaine in the old French city of New Orleans," I answered coldly, precisely "And after he has died and is at rest, I haven’t the slightest idea"

"You can’t mean this," she said

"I am booked on the next ship out of Alexandria," I said

"I will go to Naples, then on to Barcelona I will leave from Lisbon for the New World"

Her face seemed to narrow, her features to sharpen Her lipsAnd then I saw the tears rising in her eyes, and I felt her e out to touchon the desk, then simply held ht, I alad Nicki took his hands with hio back to Paris and get theoing to him!" she whispered

Hioing!" I said

She esture She cahter than Armand’s

"Has any of our kind ever ?" she asked under her breath

"Not that I know of In Rome they said no"

"Perhaps it can’t be done, this crossing"

"It can be done You know it can" We had sailed the seas before in our cork-lined coffins Pity the leviathan who troubles me

She came even nearer and looked down at me And the pain in her face couldn’t be concealed anyowns or plumed hats or pearls?

"You knohere to reach me," I said, but the bitterness of my tone had no conviction to it "The addresses ofas vampires already They will always be there You know all this, you’ve always known"

"Stop," she said under her breath "Don’t say these things to me"

What a lie all this hat a travesty It was just the kind of exchange she had always detested, the kind of talk she could never s, I had never expected it to be like this -- that I should say cold things, that she should cry I thought I would bahen she said she was going I thought I would throw myself at her very feet

We looked at each other for a long

And then I lost athered her so, no le, and we both cried almost silently as if we couldn’t make ourselves stop But she didn’t yield to me She didn’t melt in my embrace

And then she drew back She stroked my hair with both her hands, and leant forward and kissed htly and soundlessly

"All right, then, ," she said

I shook my head Words and words and words unspoken She had no use for theuid way, hips arden and looked up at the night sky before she looked back at ," she said finally

Bold young Frenchh places in a hundred cities where only an alleycat could safely pass