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“ ‘Louis, I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it,’ he growled through his tears ‘Help me, Louis, stay with me’

“ ‘But why are you afraid?’ I asked ‘Don’t you knohat these things are?’ And as I looked down at hiainst o, that tall, stately gentle black cape, with his head thrown back, his rich, flawless voice singing the lilting air of the opera fro the cobblestones in ti woman who stood by, enrapt, so that a s died on his lips; and for one moment, that one moment when his eye met hers, all evil seemed obliterated in that flush of pleasure, that passion foralive

“Was this the price of that involve froht say to hi condemned him to this retreat save hins of inevitable death But I did not say these things, and I knew that I would not

“It seemed the silence of the room rushed back around us, like a dark sea that the siren had driven away The flies swar body of a rat, and the child looked quietly up at ht baubles, and its dier that I poised above its tiny petal mouth

“Lest

at had risen, straightened, but only to bend over and slink into the chair ‘You won’t stay with hed But then he looked away and seemed suddenly absorbed

“ ‘I wanted to talk to you so ht I came home in the Rue Royale I only wanted to talk to you!’ He shuddered violently, eyes closed, his throat see to contract It was as if the blows I’d struck hiuehis lip, his voice low, almost natural ‘I went to Paris after you…’

“ ‘What was it you wanted to tell me?’ I asked ‘What was it you wanted to talk about?’

“I could well remember his ht of it in years No, I had never thought of it And I are that I spoke of it noith great reluctance

“But he only setic smile And shook his head I watched his eyes fill with a soft, bleary despair

“I felt a profound, undeniable relief

“ ‘But you will stay!’ he insisted

“ ‘No,’ I answered

“ ‘And neither will I!’ said that young vampire from the darkness outside And he stood for a second in the openlooking at us Lestat looked up at him and then sheepishly away, and his lower lip seemed to thicken and treer at theThen a sob burst fro his mouth with his hand, he put his head down and cried

“The young va fast on the walk, heard the heavy chink of the iron gate And I was alone with Lestat, and he was crying It see all that tis that had passed between us I was reotten And I was conscious then of that sa sadness which I’d felt when I saw the place in the Rue Royale where we had lived Only, it didn’t seeay vampire who used to live there then It see beyond Lestat that only included his I’d ever lost or loved or known It seemed then I was in a different place, a different time And this different place and time was very real, and it was a roo here and the air had been close and thick with death and with the spring perfu with it a terrible pain, a pain so terrible that my mind veered away from it, said, No, don’t take , and I ith Lestat here now Astonished, I saw listen on the child’s cheek, and I saw the cheek beco the light in the tears