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When I didn't answer, he stopped and ery kisses

"You love me," I said, "as I am now, even more than before "

"Oh, yes," he said He hugged hly and kissed an to kiss my chest "I can't hurt you now, I can't snuff out your life with an accidental embrace You're mine, of my flesh and of my blood "

He stopped He was crying He didn't want me to see He turned ahen I tried to catch his face with my impertinent hands

"Master, I love you," I said

"Pay attention," he said brushing me off, obviously impatient with his tears He pointed to the sky "You'll always knohen , if you pay attention Do you feel it? Do you hear the birds? There are in all parts of the world those birds who sing right before dawn "

A thought cas I had missed in the deep Monastery of the Caves under Kiev was the sound of birds Out in the wild grasses, hunting withfro of the birds We had never been too long in the miserable riverside hovels of Kiev without those forbidden journeys into the wild lands from which so many didn't return

But that was gone I had all of sweet Italy around reat voluptuous ic of this transformation

"For this I rode into the wild lands," I whispered "For this he took me out of the Monastery on that last day "

My Master looked at me sadly "I hope so," he said "What I know of your past, I learnt from your mind when it was open to me, but it's closed now, closed because I've made you a vampire, the same as I am, and we can never know each other'sroar in our ears e try to talk in silence to one another, and so I let go forever of those awful iround Monastery which flashed so brilliantly in your thoughts, but alith agony, alith near despair "

"Yes, despair, and all that is gone like the pages of a book torn loose and thrown into the wind Just like that, gone "

He hurried h the back alleys

"We go now to our cradle," he said, "which is our crypt, our bed which is our grave "

We entered an old dilapidated palazzo, tenanted only with a few sleeping poor I didn't like it I had been brought up by hi impossibility in rank and watery Venice, but a cellar it was, indeed We made our way down stone stairs, past thick bronze doors, which men alone could not open, until in the inky blackness we had found the final room

"Here's a trick," ht you yourself will be strong enough to work "