He would not believe that they both wanted to be consoled as by a sister, or a mother, for his erratic behavior, his multitude of treacheries.

Antiphonal music of desires at cross currents repeated to infinity. Jay the gate-crasher seeking a truth too black and white. And the key lay in prefabricated myths which appeared in dreams with veiled faces, mute, undecipherable.

Until Djuna took up each strand, delicately separating each one from pain and blindness, the pain of blindness. Strange how in this light, high above the earth, flying through the regions of awareness which Djuna had taken her into by a method of ascension she had finally learned from her. Djuna's words, Djuna the aviator of language, air force for grounded lives.

For awhile Lillian had been devoted to both Jay and Sabina. And what had Jay wanted? To own them both? She remembered his letter to her: "You are really strong. I warn you. I am no angel. I am insatiable. I will ask the impossible of you. What it is I don't know."

And a few years later he demanded of her that she understand the presence of Sabina at first only in his paintings...and then later in their lives. He even wanted Lillian to help him know Sabina.

Just before she left Paris for the last time, abdicating, Lillian said to Jay: "Now the time has come for me to tell you of the Sabina I know, because it will make you love her more. You see, what I was given to see was a glimpse of Sabina's innocence. That night...we had both dreamed of escaping from our bodies, our molds. At a certain stage of exaltation all the boundaries are lost, identity too. Sabina was awkward too; she did not know how to behave before a woman. She kept repeating: 'I'd like to be at the beginning of everything, when I could believe, I'd like to be at the beginning of all experience, as you are, able to give yourself, trusting.' She wanted my innocence, and what we want is what we are. And I...all my life I could hardly live or breathe for fear of hurting anyone, I had seen Sabina take what she wanted and being loved for it. And I wanted to catch from her by contagion that irresponsibility. Now you will love her more."

"No," said Jay, "much less. Because she would never tell me what you have told me. What you describe—I could not hate that. There's some beauty to it. I have just realized that what I gave you was something coarse and plain compared with that."

"No, Jay, you made me a woman. Sabina would have thrust me back into being a half woman, as I was before I met you."

"Beyond the love," said Jay, "we were friends. Sabina and I will never be friends. I hate her unnecessary complications."