I didn’t bother to answer. I had decided that instead of arguing with her or talking to her, I would enjoy her. I so hopelessly loved her, her defiant demeanor, her unbroken courage, her pale oval face with its immutable stamp of feminine allure that no coldness of heart could alter. Besides, I had too much on my mind already. Yes, it was lovely to be with her again, and yes, it was intense. Woe to the blood drinker who makes a fellow blood drinker of his mortal kin. But I was thinking about the Voice, and I couldn’t think of much else.

So I was sitting at my antique gold-and-fruitwood writing desk, my precious bit of genuine Louis XV furniture in this place, with my feet up on it just watching her, my hands folded on my lap. And I was thinking, What can I do with what I know, what I sense?

It was a beautiful sunset, or it had been. And the mountains of my homeland were visible out there with the stars sweeping down to touch them, a clear and perfect night so far from the noise and pollution of the world, with only a few voices coming from that little string of shops and dwellings that made up the village on the mountain road beneath us, and we two here in this room which had once been a bedchamber but which was now a spacious paneled and decorated salon.

My mirrors, my traceries of gold on rosewood, my Flemish tapestries, Kirman carpets, Empire chandeliers.

The château had indeed undergone a magnificent restoration. Its four towers were now complete and a multitude of rooms completely reconstructed and supplied with electric light and heat. As for the village, it was very small, and existed only to sustain the little workforce of carpenters and craftsmen engaged with the restoration. We were too far off the beaten path in this part of the Auvergne even for the tourists, let alone the rest of the world.

What we had here was solitude and quiet—blessed quiet. Quiet such as only the rural world can provide—far from the voices of Clermont-Ferrand or Riom. And blessed beauty all around us in green fields and undisturbed forests in this old part of France where once so many poor and struggling families had suffered so much for every loaf of bread or morsel of meat. Not so now. New highways had opened the mountainous and isolated peaks and valleys of the Auvergne to the rest of the country several decades ago and with them had come the inevitable technological embrace of modern Europe. But it remained the least populated part of France, perhaps of Europe—and this château, surrounded and accessible only through private gated roads, was not even on the current maps.