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And, once I had her seated against the cushions, half awake and answering me, her face never more beautiful, never more pale, I took up the solitary oar.

Into the darker regions of Venice I traveled, the mist hanging thick over the canals, to those dimly lighted places where ruffians abound.

"Wake, princess," I said to her, "we are on the silent battlefield, and very soon will see our enemy, and the little war we love so much will begin. "

In my pain I could scarcely stand upright, but as always happens in such situations, those we sought came out to do harm to us.

Sensing in my posture and her beauty the very shape of weakness, they forfeited their strength at once.

Into her arms, I easily enticed a proud and youthful victim, "who would pleasure the lady if that's what we wished" and from this one she easily consumed a fatal draught, his dagger falling into the bottom of the boat.

The next victim, a swaggering drunkard who hailed us down with promises of a nearby banquet to which we'd all be admitted, stepped fatally into my grasp.

I had barely the strength for it, and once again the blood ran riot within me, healing me with such violent magic that it bordered upon an increasing pain.

The third who came into our arms was a vagabond, whom I enticed with a coin I did not possess. Bianca took him, her words slurred, disappointed that he had been so frail.

And all of this, beneath the veil of the ink-black night, and far away from the lights of the houses such as our own.

On and on we went. The Mind Gift in me grew stronger with each kill. My pain was eased with each kill. My flesh was more fully restored with each kill.

But it would take a wilderness of kills to restore me, an inconceivable wilderness of victims to bring back to me the vigor which I had possessed before.

I knew that beneath my clothes, I appeared as one made of ropes dipped in pitch, and I could not imagine the dreadful terror that my face had become.

Meantime, Bianca waked from her daze and suffered the pains of her mortal death, and now longed to return to her rooms for fresh clothing so that she might return with me to the golden lined room, in garments fit for her to be my bride.

She had had all too much of the blood of the victims and needed more of mine, but she did not know this, and I did not tell her as much.

Only reluctantly did I concede to her request, taking her back to her palazzo, and waiting uneasily in the gondola until she came, marvelously dressed, to join me, her skin like her purest white pearls.

Forsaking forever her many rooms, she brought with her many bundles, indeed all the clothes she wished to take with her, and all her jewels, and many candles, that we might be together in our hiding place without the roar of the torch.

At last we were in the golden chamber by ourselves, and she was brimming with happiness as she gazed at me, her secretive and silent masked bridegroom.

And only a single candle gave its slender light for us both.

She had spread out a cloak of green velvet that we might sit on it, and so we did.

My legs were crossed, and she leant back on her ankles. My pain was quiet in me yet terrible. Quiet in that it did not lurch with each breath I took but remained steady and allowed me to breathe as I would.

Out of her many bundles she produced for me a polished mirror with a bone handle.

"Here, take the mask off, if you wish," she said, her oval eyes very brave and hard. "You will not frighten me!"

I looked at her for a long moment, cherishing her beauty, studying all the subtle changes which the Blood had worked in her¡ªhow it had made her so extravagantly and richly the replica of her former self.

"You find me pleasing, do you not?" she asked.

"Always," I said. "There was a time when I wanted so to give you the Blood that I couldn't look at you. There was a time when I would not go to your rooms for fear that I should lure you to the Blood with all my charms, such as they ever were. "

She was amazed. "I never dreamt it," she said.

I looked into the mirror. I saw the mask. I thought of the name of the Order: Talamasca. I thought of Raymond Gallant.

"You can read nothing of my mind now, can you?" I asked her.

"No," she said, "nothing. " She was most puzzled.