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"Won't you even smile now as you say farewell?" I asked "If this bitter coldness now is all you feel, and you would let me die of this rampant fever? I'm sick unto death, you know it You know the nausea that I feel, you know the hurt inside my head, you know the ache in all my joints and how these cuts burn in my skin with their indisputable poison Why are you so very far away, yet here, co?"

"I feel the love I've always felt when I look at you," he said, " one I feel it It's walled up inside where it should stay, perhaps, and let you die, for yes, you will, and then perhaps your priests will take you, for how can they not when there is no returning?"

"Ah, but what if there are many lands? What if on the second fall, I findearth and not the beauty first revealed toSo much is lost I can't remember It seems I say those same words so much I can't remember!"

I reached out He didn't otten prayer book I felt the stiff velluers

"What's killed your love? Was it the things I did? That I brought the man here who slew my brothers? Or that I died and saw such wonders? Answer me "

"I love you still I will alldays, forever Your face is as a jewel given h I lister will torture ain, open your mind as if it were a shell, and let ht you "

"Can you, Master? Can you understand how love and love alone could mean so very rass, the leaves of trees, the fingers of this hand that reaches for you? Love, Master Love And ill believe such sis when there are dexterous and labyrinthian creeds and philosophies of manmade and ever seductive complexity? Love I heard the sound of it I saw it Were these the delusions of a feverish mind, a mind afraid of death?"

"Perhaps," he said, his face still feelingless and motionless His eyes were narrow, prisoners of their own shrinking from what they saw "Ah, yes," he said "You die and I let you, and I think there ain your priests, your city "

"It's not my time," I said "I know it And such a statement cannot be undone by aclock They meant, by a soul's incarnate life, it wasn't time Some destiny carved in my infant hand will not be so soon fulfilled or easily defeated "

"I can tip the odds, my child," he said This tihtened in his face, and his eyes greide and unguarded, the old self I knew and cherished "I can so easily take the la

st strength left in you " He leant over ations in the pupils of his eyes, the bright deep-pointed stars behind the darkening irises His lips, so wondrously decorated with all the tiny lines of human lips, were rosy as if a human kiss resided there "I can so easily take one last fatal drink of your child's blood, one last quaff of all the freshness I so love, and in my arms I'll hold a corpse so rich in beauty that all who see it eep, and that corpse will tell one, that much I'll know, and no more "

"Do you say these things to torture o there, I want to be with you!"

His lip worked in plain desperation He seeue and sadness hovering on the borders of his eyes His hand, out now to touch

I caught it as if it were the high waving branch of a tree above ers to my lips like so many leaves and kissed them

Turning my head I laid them on my wounded cheek I felt the throb of the veno tremor within them