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"Are you telling me," I demanded, "that you mean to leave me again for this creature? You think I will stand for it?"

"And what are you saying to me, Marius, that you will force me?" Her voice was low, distant.

"But you've told me you're weak, you've told me you're a slave. Is this not asking for me to force you?"

She shook her head. She was ready to weep. Again I wanted to pull down her hair, to see it loose, to take the jewels out of it. I wanted to take her face in my hands.

I did it. I held her face too roughly.

"Pandora, listen to me," I said. "One hundred years ago, I learnt from a strange mortal that in your wanderings with this creature you circled again and again the city of Dresden. And learning this, I moved myself to this city to wait for you. Not a night has passed that I have not awakened to look through Dresden to find you.

"Now that I have you in my arms I have no intention of abandoning you. "

She shook her head. She seemed for a moment incapable of speech. I felt that she was imprisoned in her strange fashionable garments and lost in some painful reverie.

"But what can I give you, Marius, but what you've already learnt? The knowledge that I live still, that I endure, that I wander? With or without Arjun, what does it matter?"

She turned her eyes to me, wondering.

"And what do I learn from you except that you go on, and that you endure¡ªthat those demons in Rome did not destroy you as they claimed, that you were burnt, yes, I can see that in the color of your skin, but you survive. Marius, what more is there?"

"What on Earth are you saying!" I demanded. I was suddenly furious. "Pandora, we have each other! Good Lord. We have time. As we come together now, time begins for us all over again!"

"Does it, Marius? I don't know," she replied. "Marius, I'm not strong enough. "

"Pandora, that's mad!" I said.

"Oh, you are so angry and it is so like our quarrels of old. "

"No, it's not!" I declared. "It's nothing like our quarrels of old because it's about nothing. Now I'm taking you from here. I'm taking you to my palace, and I shall deal with Arjun as best as I can afterwards. "

"You can't do such a thing," she said sharply. "Marius, I've been with him for hundreds of years. You think you can simply come between us?"

"I want you, Pandora. I shall settle for nothing else. And if such a time comes that you want to leave me¡ª. "

"Yes, and what if it does come," she said angrily, "then what shall I do when there is no Arjun on account of you!"

I fell silent. I was in a rage. She was staring at me intently. Her face was full of feeling. Her breast heaved under the tight satin.

"Do you love me?" I demanded.

"Completely," she said in her angry voice.

"Then you are coming with me!"

I took her by the hand.

No one moved to stop us as we left the palace.

As soon as I had her in the carriage, I kissed her wantonly as mortals kiss and wanted to sink my teeth into her throat but she forbade it.

"Let me have that intimacy!" I begged. "For the love of Heaven, Pandora, it's Marius who is speaking to you. Listen to me. Let us share blood and blood. "

"Don't you think I want to?" she asked. "I'm afraid. "

"Afraid of what?" I demanded. "Tell me what you fear. I'll make it vanish. "

The carriage rolled on out of Dresden and through the forest towards my palace.