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Jesse was in a panic that Maharet would be angry with her, but when she looked into Maharet's eyes she knew that there was no cause for worry Then Jesse looked down and saw that the front of her dress was torn She felt a sharp pain where Mae! had been kissing her, and when she turned to Maharet, she became disoriented, unable to hear her oords

She was sitting on her bed so flannel gown She was telling Maharet that her ain, she'd seen her on the terrace But that was only part of what she'd been saying because she and Maharet had been talking for hours about the whole thing But hole thing? Maharet told her she would forget

Oh, God, how she tried to recall after Bits and pieces had tormented her for years Maharet's hair was down, and it was very long and full They had hosts, she and Maharet, Maharet holding her, and now and then stopping to kiss her, and she had hugged Maharet Maharet's body felt like stone that could breathe

They were high up in the mountain in a secret roohts, giving off a low electronic huular screen that stretched dozens of feet up the wall

, was an enorht This was the Great Fah all the millennia Ah, yes, to one root! The plan was matrilineal, which had always been the ith the ancient peoples-as it had been with the Egyptians, yes, descent through the princesses of the royal house And as it was, after a fashion, with the Hebrew tribes to this day

All the details had been plain to Jesse at this !-God, had she known even the beginning?-the staggering reality of hundreds of generations charted before her eyes! She had seen the progress of the fah the ancient countries of Asia Minor and Macedonia and Italy and finally up through Europe and then to the New World! And this could have been the chart of any human family!

Never after was she able to reinvoke the details of that electronic et it Theat all

But what else had happened? What had been the real thrust of their long talk?

Maharet crying, that she re with the soft feirl Maharet had never appeared so alluring; her face had been softened, yet luminous, the lines so few and so delicate But it had been shadowy then, and Jesse could scarcely see anything clearly She re like a white ereen eyes clouded yet vibrant, and the blond eyelashes glistening as if the tiny hairs had been stroked with gold

Candles burning in her rooh outside theJesse had been begging, protesting But what in God's naument about?

You will forget this You will re

She'd knohen she opened her eyes in the sunlight that it was over; they had gone Nothing had come back to her in those first fewirrevocable had been said

Then she had found the note on the bedside table:

My darling,

It is no longer good for you to be around us I fear we have all become too enamored of you and would sweep you off your feet and take you away fros which you have set out to do