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"What was it in his face?" Dora asked

"Horror, horror that such a thing had happened You see, when he reached for ers, like this, went into the eye socket, overshooting the rab ed into the socket, he tried in horror to draw the down my face, and he was horror-stricken!"

"You love him," said Armand in a hushed voice

"I love hi But I don't believe in anything!"

"Why didn't you accept?" asked Arive him your soul?"

Oh, how innocent he sounded, how it came from his heart, ancient and childlike, a heart so preternaturally strong that it had taken hundreds of years to render it safe to beat in the company of mortal hearts

Little Devil, Armand!

"Why didn't you accept!" he implored

"They let you escape, and they had a purpose," said David "It was like the vision I saw in the cafe "

"Yes, and they had a purpose," I said "But did I defeat their purpose?" I looked to him for the answer, he the wise o

ne, the old one in human years "David, did I defeat them when I took you out of life?

Did I defeat them somehow some other way? Oh, if only I could reeance Soeance But it was those fragments I can't remember now What's happened! Will they come back for me?"

I fell to crying again Stupid I fell to describing Meain, in all his forms, even the Ordinary Man, who had been so extraordinary in his proportions, the haunting footsteps, the wings, the sels"Sapphiric" I whispered

"Those surfaces, all the things the prophets saw and sprinkled throughout their books ords like topaz and beryl and fire and gold and ice and snow, and it was all thereand He said, 'Drink my Blood!' I did it!"

They drew close to me I'd scared them I'd been too loud, too crazed, too possessed They stood around ainst me, her fiery white human arms, the warainst my face