"Who's there?" he said, always with the tone of a man at war, fearing ambush.

"Sabina. I just wanted to know... Are you all right?"

"Of course I'm all right. I was in the hospital."

"The hospital?"

"A bout of malaria, that's all."

"Malaria?"

"I get it, when I drink too much..."

"Will I see you tomorrow?"

He laughed softly: "My father is coming to stay with me."

"We won't be able to see each other then. I'd better return to New York."

"I'll call you when I get back."

"Will you come down and kiss me goodnight?"

He hesitated: "They will hear me. They will tell my father."

"Goodbye, goodnight..."

"Goodbye," he said, detached, cheerful.

But she could not leave Long Island. It was as if he had thrown a net around her by the pleasure she wanted again, by his creation of a Sabina she wanted to erase, by a poison he alone had the cure for, of a mutual guilt which only an act of love could transmute into something else than a one-night encounter with a stranger.

The moon mocked her as she walked back to her empty bed. The moon's wide grin which Sabina had never noticed before, never before its mockery of this quest of love which she influenced. I understand his madness, why does he run away from me? I feel close to him, why does he not feel close to me, why doesn't he see the resemblance between us, between our madness. I want the impossible, I want to fly all the time, I destroy ordinary life, I run towards all the dangers of love as he ran towards all the dangers of war. He runs away, war is less terrifying to him than life...

John and the moon left this madness unexorcised. No trace of it was revealed except when she was taunted:

"Aren't you interested in war news, don't you read the papers?"

"I know war, I know all about war."

"You never seem very close to it."

(I slept with war, all night I slept with war once. I received deep war wounds into my body, as you never did, a feat of arms for which I will never be decorated!)

In the multiple peregrinations of love, Sabina was quick to recognize the echoes of larger loves and desires. The large ones, particularly if they had not died a natural death, never died completely and left reverberations. Once interrupted, broken artificially, suffocated accidentally, they continued to exist in separate fragments and endless smaller echoes.

A vague physical resemblance, an almost similar mouth, a slightly similar voice, some particle of the character of Philip, or John, would emigrate to another, to whom she recognized immediately in a crowd, at a party, by the erotic resonance it reawakened.

The echoes struck at first through the mysterious instrumentation of the senses which retained sensations as instruments retain a sound after being touched. The body remained vulnerable to certain repetitions long after the mind believed it had made a clear, a final severance.