When she emerged from the long thick bamboo hedge, he went into her arms, and for a long moment, they held one another, rocking back and forth, and then he broke the grip and covered her face with kisses. She stood very still, allowing this, a slender female with wavy brown hair wearing a long simple hooded cloak and robe, her pale-white hands stroking Arjun’s hair, her eyes closed as she savored the moment.

Excitedly he brought her towards the veranda, and into the light coming from the rooms of the bungalow. “Sit here, please, sit here!” he said, bringing her to the teakwood table and the peacock chairs. Then, unable to stop himself, he embraced her again and sobbed silently against her shoulder.

She whispered to him in the tongue they’d shared when she’d wooed and wed him. She consoled him with her kisses.

Gremt had risen to his feet as any gentleman might in the presence of a woman. And this woman, Pandora, took his measure carefully, even as she suffered more kisses and embraces from Arjun. Her eyes were now fixed on him, and she was obviously listening to the beat of Gremt’s heart, to the sound of his respiration, as she studied his skin, his eyes, his hair.

What did she see? A tall blue-eyed male with short black wavy hair and Caucasian skin and a face modeled on a Greek statue, a man with broad capable shoulders and slender hands, dressed in a plain long black silk thawb that covered him to his ankles, a garment that might have passed for a priest’s cassock in another country. This was the body Gremt had perfected for himself over some fourteen hundred years. It might have fooled any human being on the planet. It could withstand the scrutiny of X-ray machines in modern airports. But it could not fool Pandora. It wasn’t biologically human.

She was shocked to the soul, but Gremt knew full well she’d seen beings like him before. Many times. Powerful beings walking around in made-up bodies, so to speak. Indeed she’d seen Gremt many a time, though she had not always known that it was Gremt by any means. And the very first time he had ever seen her, he had been bodiless.

“I am your friend,” Gremt said immediately. And he extended his hand to her, though she didn’t lift her hand in response.

Arjun was now wiping away his tears with an old linen handkerchief. Carefully, he tucked this back into his pocket.

“I did not mean to do it!” he said frantically. He was imploring her to understand.

And Pandora as if wakened from a spell turned her eyes away from Gremt and back to him.

“I knew you didn’t,” she said. “I understood this completely.”

“What you must think of me!” he persisted, his face stricken with shame.