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“ ‘Don’t you know, don’t you have that power?’ I asked ‘Can’t you read hts as if they ords?’

“He shook his head ‘Not the way you er to you and the child is real because it’s real to you And I know your loneliness even with her love is almost more terrible than you can bear’

“I stood up then It would seeo to the door, to hurry quickly down that passage; and yet it took every ounce of strength, every s I’ve called my detachment

“ ‘I ask you to keep them away from us,’ I said at the door; but I couldn’t look back at him, didn’t even want the soft intrusion of his voice

“ ‘Don’t go,’ he said

“ ‘I have no choice’

“I was in the passage when I heard him so close to me that I started He stood beside me, eye level with my eye, and in his hand he held a key which he pressed into mine

“ ‘There is a door there,’ he said, gesturing to the dark end, which I’d thought to be merely a wall ‘And a stairs to the side street which no one uses but myself Go this way now, so you can avoid the others You are anxious and they will see it’ I turned around to go at once, though every part ofwanted to rehtly he pressed the back of his hand against my heart ‘Use the power inside you Don’t abhor it anymore Use that power! And when they see you in the streets above, use that power to aze on them as on anyone: beware Take that word as if it were an aiven you to wear about your neck And when your eyes o’s eyes, or the eyes of any other vampire, speak to them politely what you will, but think of that word and that word only Remember what I say I speak to you simply because you respect what is sith’

“I took the key fro it into the lock or going up the steps Or where he was or what he’d done Except that, as I was stepping into the dark side street behind the theater, I heard him say very softly to me from someplace close to me: ‘Come here, to me, when you can’ I looked around for him but was not surprised that I couldn’t see him He had told me also sometime or other that I ive the others the shred of evidence of guilt they wanted ‘You see,’ he said, ‘killing other va; that is why it is forbidden under penalty of death’

“And then I see with rain, to the tall, narrow buildings on either side of me, to the fact that the door had shut to er there

“And though I knew Claudia waited for as la waxen petaled flowers, Ithe darker streets s me, as so often the streets of New Orleans had done

“It was not that I did not love her; rather, it was that I knew I loved her only too well, that the passion for her was as great as the passion for Ar the desire for the kill rise inconsciousness, threatening pain

“Out of thetowardson the landscape of a dreaht around ht have been anywhere in the world, and the soft lights of Paris were an a And sharp-eyed and drunk, he alking blindly into the ar out to touch the very bones of my face

“I was not crazed yet, not desperate I ht have said to hiiven me, ‘Beware’ Yet I let him slip his bold, drunken ar eyes, to the voice that begged to paint me now and spoke of warmth, to the rich, sweet smell of the oils that streaked his loose shirt I was following hih Montmartre, and I whispered to hi rasses, and he was laughing as I said, ‘Alive, alive,’ his hand touching uided ht of the low doorway, his reddened face brilliantly illu about us as the door closed

“I saw the great sparkling orbs of his eyes, the tiny red veins that reached for the dark centers, that waruided , faces rising in the s stove, a wonderland of colors on canvases surrounding us beneath the small, sloped roof, a blaze of beauty that pulsed and throbbed ‘Sit down, sit down…’ he said to ainst er rising in waves