He is right to tell you that I betrayed his trust. I know that he is right to tell you it. We had been lovers a hundred years before I could not stand... do you know what I am speaking about? I began to write letters I did not think seriously of sending. I learned letters slowly. In those days, the emphasis had been on reading the bible, and reciting it, and memorizing it, and this was the purpose of learning reading. What was the purpose of learning writing? They did not teach it to me in church. Even now, I think, is it so important, what I have to say? So I do not ever learn it well, even if sometimes I think that I want to. Is it so useful, what is in my mind, in my heart? I cannot summon the conviction to believe that. I only ever learned to write so that I could write to my Laurent, and so I wrote him letters, maybe just to practice writing. But it was always in me that I would write to him, see that? But I did give the letters to a courier one evening after I fought heartily with Darkling. Over what? We were quarreling a lot, because even when he is not disturbed by noise he has a heat. 

But that heat is what I liked in the beginning, is that not the case? I saw him as he was when he was still living, and he was suffering, and yet he walked even then with a very straight back, and with narrowed eyes, and a sense of himself in the world. He had in him a judgment of things, and his own mind, and a talent, and I so wanted it, and for him to see me, and to judge me, and be of a mind about me. I wanted for him to look upon me with his eyes narrowed, like that, narrow, like this, and say "Good" and perhaps to kiss me in the way I had never seen him kiss a lover, and say "Good" and to say "Like" and like me. You will see that what I am saying now is not so romantic. He accuses me of Romanticism. I have heard that. But what I felt then, I know that it was selfish, but I thought that it was all right because I thought that I knew who he was, and that I saw him for himself, and that my love, or what I thought love, would be enough. And it was no more than that, or prettier than that, which is necessary to add beauty if one is a Romantic. I am not.

But it wasn't enough, and he is right to tell you that as well, though it is our private affair, and old hurts are made magnified by distance. It was not so bad. After that first year, when he suffered more than his share of suffering, he was like a newborn thing, and curious of me, and of his new place in the world, and gorgeous. I am meaning to tell you that I loved him so much, and that we were so happy, that he was my sun in the world, and warm to me, and all my light entire, and that he still is, and that when he is near I am warm and full inside my body, and contented. And when he suffers I suffer, and when he is angry with me, I squirm like a caterpillar trapped beneath the beak of a bird. But I am still living. Do not worry about my tears. You will know that I am emotional.

So how will I explain to you, though you know it well already, how I felt drawn to Laurent again, and wanted him, and wanted his fingers to drag across my flesh, and be slapped by him, and make him pull my hair, and tell me that I was not worth his regard, and how it thrilled me? But it is also true that Quinn had begun to suffer again as he had done as a youngling, and that it tried our souls, and shook me so deeply that I knew no other way but to ask for help, and to ask it from one that even now I fear and shudder in his presence? For I am speaking now of sending letters directly to that serpent who had collected my missives to his master, our master, instead of delivering them.

I said, "Help me in all things, for I do not know what I do," and he said, still living at the same address, "If you come I will make it right for you with him, with Laurent, and it will be all of a peace, and we will examine your lover, and his illness, and find it out, and help him." Because, as I have said before, though I have scorned him, and shivered, and find him in my nightmares when I dream, still, Dasius has had love and affection for me in his heart, and I know that, and so that when he said he would help me, I believed him.

And so there came an evening, when the screaming came so strongly and so long, that even biting upon a twisted cloth my Darkling could not stop the sound, and he bit so hard down that there was blood in his mouth. And he tore at himself, and I could not make myself tie him down, and I could not do it anymore. I could not do it anymore, and I thought that I will kill us both, and hearing this thought I thought that asking for help, it is better than killing him who I love. When he had quietened a little, I took him by his shaking hand, and I said, "Now come dear, we will go to the doctor," and still my accent is not good, so he could not understand. I said, "Go to the doctor," and he tried to get away from me, because he thought that it meant pain, because he is very simple and childish when the trembling comes upon him. 

He said, "Wherefore, if we go, do you know that he might help me?" and he is still these days saying his "wherefore"s and "hitherto"s. 

I said, "Because it is his work that did preserve my own body, when I faced the veil."

Here now he comes. Quinny. Come and let me sit beneath your arm. There is room enough. There and we are whole again. Will I tell the story in French, and it will be all right because you will not know what I say, darling? To tell it truly. I am better in French. And see, he is doing all right again, and how fine he is. Aren't you? He is doing fine now. I am as happy as I have ever been, hearing it.

I paid a man with my mouth to take us across the Channel. We did not have money in those days. It felt nothing at all to do that, for I have never been ashamed of what I must do for us. He gave me a little money in addition to providing us safe passage across the water, and called after us that they wanted good whores in England, and why should we abandon the country for France? But it is France that I have always thought of, though I live very far from her. I used that money to buy a hackney mare, barely good for knackering, but she was fit for holding up my darling, who laid across her back, and I walked beside her to Paris, two weeks. I set her loose at the mouth of the Seine, where she lay down and died. Quinny climbed onto my back then, and I took him up the hill, whispering to him that it would be all right. That day's light grew pale.

I did think it would be all right. I had that sense of peace that accompanies one who is returning home. For surely, there could be no hell like the loneliness of being on one's own, but when I knocked there came no response, though Quinny's fingers tightened upon my neck and he whispered, "Oh God, oh God, what is it? What is it? Satan breathes, we must flee from this place, pray us get from here, I feel his lips by my ear. It is our death!" as if he were being strangled. I knew better than not to heed him, for he knows things from the beyond, and I let him down so that we could go down the hill again. I could not know then what he had sniffed there. 

We stayed beneath a bridge that night, tucked up out of the rain. I wanted to wash his clothes in the river, but the water was as a stinking pustule, even worse than when I had fondly looked upon it as a young man. I did not think of finding other clothes, the way others of us might have. I have never much at all had a taste for killing. My lover suffered from travelling, his lips parted, breathing in the thick air through lips he could not close. Quinny stared out on my city through unseeing, glassy eyes. I thought, please God, where are they? for the devil received my letters, and told me to come. How could they have gone elsewhere? Did I wait too long? I ached for familiar voices. I did not even think of the touch of a familiar hand. 

That night I did not dream at all, continuously waking up in a feeling of fright and panic. Upon waking, always, there were Quinny's fluttering fingers, and his whispering in English, which is even now a language I only half understand. "Peace, peace. We left it behind. A bad spirit. We are safe." But those words were as part of the nightmare. What did it mean? What bad spirit? I would lower my face again, under his cooing, and rest my head by his collarbones, so that I could listen to the strong muscle of his heart. I fell asleep over and over to the pressing of his fingers to my cheeks. In the morning, he said, "Dear sweet frog, find blood for me. I am desperate for relief," very frank, and I promised that I would. I have always promised him everything. I asked him in the morning to kiss me, and he said, "After you bring it to me, the blood, I will let you do anything you want, but only then," which excited me devilishly, and tightened my resolve that even in this place, he would continue to rule me completely.

We were cossetted in beggar's rags, both of us. I knew that if I were to search out those two who were familiar to me, it would not do to look like that. I am averse very much to highway robbery, but as I have said, matters of the body have been of no concern to me. I left Darkling to sleep in the daylight, which has bothered him more than it is has me, and I went to Montmarte, where a quick tug or four might mean hot water and just enough money to spirit myself into the appearance of at least the middle class, though not well, because I am tall and require the services of a tailor to seem well-dressed. I have good hair however, which one may always sell, and am lucky to have a face that has always been considered attractive in the centuries I have lived across. So having told you all of this, you will know that when I wandered into the cafe in Montmarte, only to sit down awhile, dizzy from having drunk quickly and secretly during the long afternoon of prostituting my body, my hair was relatively short and my clothes were mostly new. I had scrubbed my face and washed myself hastily in an escort's red room, who, when she was not looking, I had stolen a little eau de toilette from.

So, he said, having crept up upon me, "You smell like a whore's toilette," near my neck, after I had closed my eyes to drowse in the sunlight.

"Laurent?" I whispered, eyes shut and limbs warm, draped over a hard cafe chair.

"I have a boy with me. We are going into the alley so that I may have my way. He will agree that you are very beautiful, though you smell like a cheap fuck on dirty sheets. Won't you come with us? I will give you it all?" He sounded very casual, though I could hear the quick beating of his heart in his voice, gasping and desperate. 

I muttered something, soft epithets of relief, but he stopped me, always a very strong hand.

"There isn't time for it now, my darling. Afterward I will take you home, and I promise you it will be just as it was, and you will sleep it off where I can keep you safe. And we will not even ever speak of where you have gone or what you have been doing. We will live together as if there has been no time at all apart."

And you see I did not have time to tell him about Quinn, because when I opened my eyes he was already going, holding a boy lightly by the hand, platinum blond hair lit white by the high afternoon sun, whether I might choose to follow him or not. I could not lose him. I followed. 

I caught glimpses of his face in the alley, in the low light, his lips flushed dark from the blood and from kissing very hard, which he has always kissed very hard. It was not until afterward, after the boy had kissed us both on the forehead, and told us we were very perfect, that I was able to look upon Laurent's face, which he did not want me to do, thrashing and trying to protect me from it. And I saw then what had happened to his eyes, how blue the new ones were, and cry. I forgot what I had come to do. I said, "But God, my God, if I had not left you," and wept.

"Chouchou, I knew that you would come back. It has sustained me."

"Praise heaven, I will never leave you again. Never," I told him. I told him that.

Because he is Laurent, and because he must always have what he wants, he used me to his vicious purpose then, piercing my neck with his teeth and pushing me against the wall. He smelled sweet, of oranges. 

And my Darkling slept by the water, unknowing.