"Very well. But there's one further distressing item. At least, I hope it will distress you."

"When Malach takes Ruth away," Rachaela said, "you'll go too."

"Unfortunately, I must."

"Yes. How convenient."

"I'll be gone a month. Maybe a little more. Then I shall return."

"Do as you want," Rachaela said.

"I must arrange my own affairs," Althene said, "before I come back to you."

"You want me to stand at my window, looking out. Wearily. He cometh not, she said."

"How can you," said Althene, evidently amused, "compare me to Adamus?"

"I don't, I don't. But you will go, and you won't come back. And I would prefer honesty. How can you, anyway, want me. The way you are—it must be random. A woman making love to a woman. But the woman is a man. Anyone who consents—"

"You try my patience," said Althene. "Get up and go away. I'm tired of you."

"Exactly."

"I shall cross the symbolic sea, and leave you here, and that's that. Back to my hoards of consenting perverted women."

"Yes."

"Rachaela," Althene said, "I'll say this only one time. Perhaps never again. And so listen to me. I love you. Am in love with you. The family have had a hand in it, and perhaps it was meant to happen. It has happened. You don't love me, naturally. You're fascinated by what I am. And I can give you pleasure. You want me to leave you, perhaps. To set you at liberty."

"I don't know," Rachaela said. She stared downward through the bed into darkness.

"I'll be gone. You'll be without me. Then you will know. When I come back—"

"You won't come back."

"We shall see," said Althene. She stood up. Behind her the other woman of glass stood before the iris-hyacinth window. "They'll want you to be present when Ruth arrives."

"They may not like what I say and do."

"Why must you say or do anything?"

"Yes," Rachaela said, "why must I."

She walked to the door.

"Do you," said Althene, "consider yourself to be perverted, because you've had sex with me?"

"I suppose I must be. No. No, not at all."

"Good," said Althene. "I have at least that, then, to carry into the sky, while Malach's dogs are howling and piddling with surprise, and the sea is churning far below."

"But is it possible," said Rachaela, "for you to love?"

Althene gazed at her. Althene's eyes were soft. They hardened to adamant. "And who, after all, could love you?"

In her white bathroom with the viridian window, Rachaela bathed and washed her hair. She shaved her legs, and the hollows under her arms, as she did every third day. Save today it was like a ritual, the taking of the Host before battle.