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I know I was thinking again that this was my Perfect Time. I meant to write it in my diary when I returned home.

As I sat at the table, I leant on my right elbow, my left hand playing idly with the rim of a cup from which I now and then pretended to drink.

And then and there appeared this Englishman, this scholar, at my left side.

"Marius," he said softly, and in full command of classical Latin: "Count me a friend and not a meddler, I beg you. I have watched you for a long time from afar. "

I felt a deep shiver. I was startled in the purest sense of the word. I turned to look at him, and saw his sharp clear eyes fixed fearlessly on me.

Again there came that message, mentally, without words, from his mind quite confidently to my own:

We offer shelter. We offer understanding. We are scholars. We watch and we are always here.

Once again a deep shiver stole over me. All the company round was blind to me, but this one saw. This one knew.

Now he passed to me a round gold coin. On it was stamped one word:

Talamasca

I looked it over, concealing my complex shock, and then I asked politely in the same classical Latin:

"What does it mean?"

"We are an Order," he said, his Latin effortless and charming. "That is our name. We are the Talamasca. We are so old we don't know our origins and why we are so called. " He spoke calmly. "But our purpose in every generation is clear. We have our rules and our traditions. We watch those whom others despise and persecute. We know secrets that even the most superstitious of men refuse to believe. "

His voice and his manners were very elegant, but the power of the mind behind his words was quite strong. His self-possession was stunning. He could not have been more than twenty.

"How did you find me?" I demanded.

"We watch at all times," he said gently, ''and we saw you when you lifted your red cloak, as it were, and stepped into the light of torches and the light of rooms such as this. "

"Ah, so, it began for you then in Venice," I said. "I have blundered. "

"Yes, here in Venice," he said. ''One of us saw you and wrote a letter to our Motherhouse in England, and I was dispatched to make certain of who and what you were. Once I glimpsed you in your own house I knew it to be true. "

I sat back and took his measure. He had put on handsome velvet of a fawn color, and wore a cloak lined with miniver, and there were simple silver rings on his hands. His pale ashen hair was long and combed plainly. His eyes were as gray as his hair. His forehead was high and bare of lines. He seemed to be shining clean.

"And what truth is this that you speak of?" I asked as gently as I could. "What is it that you know to be true of me?"

"You are a vampire, a blood drinker," he said without flinching, his voice as polite as

ever, his manner composed. "You've lived for centuries. I can't know your age. I don't presume to know. I wish that you would tell me. You have not blundered. It is I who have come to greet you. "

It was charming to be speaking in the old Latin. And his eyes, reflecting the light of the lamps, were full of an honest excitement tempered only by his dignity.

"I have come into your house when it was open," he said. "I have accepted your hospitality. Oh, what I would give to know how long you've lived, and what you have seen. "

"And what would you do with that intelligence?" I asked him, "If I did tell you such things?"

"Commit it to our libraries. Increase the knowledge. Let it be known that what some say is legend is in fact truth. " He paused and then he said: "Magnificent truth. "

"Ah, but you have something to record even now, don't you?" I asked. "You can record that you have seen me here. "

Quite deliberately I looked away from him and towards the dancers before us. Then I looked back at him to see that he had followed, obediently, the direction of my gaze.

He watched Bianca as she made her circle in the carefully modulated dance, her hand clasped by that of Amadeo who smiled at her, the light glimmering on his cheek. She seemed the girl again when the music played so very sweetly, and when Amadeo gazed on her with such approving eyes.

"And what else do you see here?" I asked, "my fine scholar of the Talamasca?"