“I’d much rather be a vampire,” I said. “I don’t like being mortal. I don’t like being weak, or sick, or fragile, or feeling pain. It’s perfectly awful. I want my body back as soon as I can get it from that thief.”

She seemed mildly shocked by this. “Even though you kill when you are in your other body, even though you drink human blood, and you hate it and you hate yourself.”

“I don’t hate it. And I don’t hate myself. Don’t you see? That’s the contradiction. I’ve never hated myself.”

“You told me you were evil, you said when I helped you I was helping the devil. You wouldn’t say those things if you didn’t hate it.”

I didn’t answer. Then I said, “My greatest sin has always been that I have a wonderful time being myself. My guilt is always there; my moral abhorrence for myself is always there; but I have a good time. I’m strong; I’m a creature of great will and passion. You see, that’s the core of the dilemma for me—how can I enjoy being a vampire so much, how can I enjoy it if it’s evil? Ah, it’s an old story. Men work it out when they go to war. They tell themselves there is a cause. Then they experience the thrill of killing, as if they were merely beasts. And beasts do know it, they really do. The wolves know it. They know the sheer thrill of tearing to pieces the prey. I know it.”

She seemed lost in her thoughts for a long time. I reached out and touched her hand.

“Come, lie down and sleep,” I said. “Lie beside me again. I won’t hurt you. I can’t. I’m too sick.” I gave a little laugh. “You’re very beautiful,” I said. “I wouldn’t think of hurting you. I only want to be near you. The late night’s coming again, and I wish you would lie with me here.”

“You mean everything you say, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“You realize you are like a child, don’t you? You have a great simplicity to you. The simplicity of a saint.”

I laughed. “Dearest Gretchen, you’re misunderstanding me in a crucial way. But then again, maybe you aren’t. If I believed in God, if I believed in salvation, then I suppose I would have to be a saint.”

She reflected for a long time, then she told me in a low voice that she had taken a leave of absence from the foreign missions only a month ago. She had come up from French Guiana to Georgetown to study at the university, and she worked only as a volunteer at the hospital. “Do you know the real reason why I took the leave of absence?” she asked me.

“No; tell me.”

“I wanted to know a man. The warmth of being close to a man. Just once, I wanted to know it. I’m forty years old, and I’ve never known a man. You spoke of moral abhorrence. You used those words. I had an abhorrence for my virginity—of the sheer perfection of my chastity. It seemed, no matter what one believed, to be a cowardly thing.”