Yes, said my soul. Yet I turned, and ripped the black scalp of hair from my victim and stomped on it with a Rumpelstiltskin foot.

David didn't flinch. Englishmen are so polite.

"Very well," I said. "I'll tell you my story."

His rooms were on the second floor, not far from where I'd paused at the top of the staircase. What a change from the barren and unheated hallways! He'd made a library for himself and with tables and chairs. A brass bed was there, dry and clean.

"These are her rooms," he said. "Don't you remember?"

"Dora," I said. I breathed her scent suddenly. Why, it was all around me. But all her personal things were gone.

These were his books, they had to be. They were new spiritual explorers-Dannion Brinkley, Hilarion, Melvin Morse, Brian Weiss, Matthew Fox, the Urantia book. Add to this old texts-Cassiodorus, St. Teresa of Avila, Gregory of Tours, the Veda, Talmud, Torah, Kama Sutra-all in original tongues. He had a few obscure novels, plays, poetry.

"Yes." He sat down at the table. "I don't need the light. Do you want it?"

"I don't know what to tell you."

"Ah," he said. He took out his mechanical pen. He opened a notebook with startlingly white paper scored with fine green lines. "You will know what to tell me." He looked up at me.

I stood hugging myself, as it were, letting my head fall as if it could drop right off me and I would die. My hair fell long about me.

I thought of Sybelle and Benjamin, my quiet girl and exuberant boy.

"Did you like them, David, my children?" I asked.

"Yes, the first moment I saw them, when you brought them in. Everyone did.

Everyone looked lovingly and respectfully at them. Such poise, such charm. I think we all dream of such confidants, faithful mortal companions of compelling grace, who aren't screaming mad. They love you, yet they are neither terrified nor entranced."

I didn't move. I didn't speak. I shut my eyes. I heard in my heart the swift, bold march of the Appassionata, those rumbling, incandescent waves of music, full of throbbing and brittle metal, Appassionata. Only it was in my head. No golden long-limbed Sybelle.

"Light the candles that you have," I said timidly. "Will you do that for me? It would be sweet to have many candles, and look, Dora's lace is hanging still on the windows, fresh and clean. I am a lover of lace, that is Brussels point de gaze, or very like it, yes, I'm rather mad for it."

"Of course, I'll light the candles," he said.

I had my back to him. I heard the sharp delicious crack of a small wooden match. I smelt it burn, and then came the liquid fragrance of the nodding wick, the curling wick, and the light rose upwards, finding the cypress boards of the stripped wooden ceiling above us. Another crack, another series of tiny sweet soft crackling sounds, and the light swelled and came down over me and fell just short of brightness along the shadowy wall.