“Was I walking out of the bath with Petronia? Were we going up a great staircase? The evening seemed a mist rather than a thing of light. The stars seemed to move in the night sky as we walked along a roofed terrace. I could hear and smell the sea.

“We came into the room where Manfred sat at his chessboard still with Arion, and both of them appeared magnificent to me, infinitely more glorious than the two girls and the boy.

“ ‘And so we have this charged vision,’ I murmured. ‘We see all things as though they were quietly on fire in all their parts.’

“ ‘I knew you would understand,’ Petronia responded. ‘I like your words. Don’t ever be afraid to speak up to me. I watched you for years before I chose you—you and your spirits. It was language that drew me as truly as beauty.’

“ ‘I love you,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that what you wanted?’

“She laughed a mild helpless laugh. Her warm arm was around my waist, and for the moment her beauty could touch my heart. She even had about her a gentle majesty. I felt that I adored her.

“We went out on the terrace and looked down at the sea. It was a clear green and blue below. I could see this in the dark, see it subtracting its color from the moonlighted sky. And see the stars above moving as if they meant to embrace us. Far away, there came marching down the slope a town of white buildings, so perilously perched it seemed unreal, and beyond, the snowcapped mountain.

“ ‘Want you to love me?’ she repeated my question. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe I wanted you to love me for a while. Maybe I want it still. How do I know what I want? If ever I knew, I might have been content. But why do I tell such lies? Or more to the point, why do I believe them? I wanted you thus from the very first moment I saw you. I marked you for myself. And only for this night or a handful of nights after. And I resolved to leave you strong, I told you so, and so we go back to Arion, and he will leave you hungry again, won’t you? Sweet Master?’

“ ‘Dare I talk of the things I saw in the blood?’ I asked her.

“ ‘Try me,’ she said in her new kindly manner, ‘and if I detest what you say, who knows what I will do? Not even I know. What did you see in the blood?’

“ ‘When you fought in the arena, was it to the death?’