I didn’t reply. I was too confused. Then I spoke the confusion.

“You know, in a horrible way, when I do come to you and reveal my true self, you may be disappointed.”

“How could that be?”

“You think me a sublime human being for the spiritual content of all I’ve said to you. You see me as some sort of blessed lunatic spilling truth with error the way a mystic might. But I’m not human. And when you know it, maybe you’ll hate it.”

“No, I could never hate you. And to know that all you’ve said is true? That would be … a miracle.”

“Perhaps, Gretchen. Perhaps. But remember what I said. We are a vision without revelation. We are a miracle without meaning. Do you really want that cross along with so many others?”

She didn’t answer. She was weighing my words. I could not imagine what they meant to her. I reached for her hand, and she let me take it, folding her fingers gently around mine, her eyes still constant as she looked at me.

“There is no God, is there, Gretchen?”

“No, there isn’t,” she whispered.

I wanted to laugh and to weep. I sat back, laughing softly to myself and looking at her, at the calm, statuesque manner in which she sat there, the light of the fire caught in her hazel eyes.

“You don’t know what you’ve done for me,” she said. “You don’t know how much it has meant. I am ready—ready to go back now.”

I nodded.

“Then it won’t matter, will it, my beautiful one, if we get into that bed together again. For surely we should do it.”

“Yes, we should do that, I think,” she answered.

IT WAS almost dark when I left her quietly to take the phone by its long cord into the little bath and call my New York agent. Once again, the number rang and rang. I was just about to give up, and turn again to my man in Paris, when a voice came on the line, and slowly let me know in halting awkward terms that my New York representative was indeed no longer alive. He had died by violence several nights ago in his office high above Madison Avenue. Robbery had now been affirmed as the motive for the attack; his computer and all his files had been stolen.

I was so stunned that I could make no answer to the helpful voice on the phone. At last I managed to collect myself sufficiently to put a few questions.

On Wednesday night, about eight o’clock, the crime had occurred. No, no one knew the extent of damage done by the theft of the files. Yes, unfortunately the poor man had suffered.

“Awful, awful situation,” said the voice. “If you were in New York, you couldn’t avoid knowing about it. Every paper in town had the story. They were calling it a vampire killing. The man’s body was entirely drained of blood.”