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"Why must I understand your feelings? When do any of you men understand mine? When do you think of me, and not of yourselves? You and Luke . . . you were two of a kind. It's the same thing to buy or to sell a person's love . . . either one is just as terrible a thing to do.

"Yes, Luke was just as horrible and as guilty for agreeing to your contract, but he wanted his precious circus so much, he was willing to sell any love he might have possessed for me. He wasn't my real father and he knew it.

"But you," I said pointing my finger at him. "To make such an offer, to appeal to his greed, to his passions . . you're like . you're like the Devil." "No, Heaven. Please." He started to reach out toward me, looking like a desperate man.

"Yes," I said, backing away. "You are like the Devil. You played upon his lusts, his passion for that circus, and like the Devil, you made him sell a part of his soul."

"But only because of my love for you!" he protested.

"I don't want that kind of love. That's not love, true and pure; that's parasitical love, love that feeds off others. You've lived a life of lies, Tony. And you're still living it and it's made you a very selfish man."

"That's not so," he insisted. "Everything I have now, everything I've done, is all for you."

"Is it? What was the one thing you knew that I wanted in my life? What was the one thing that made my life complete, that gave me hope and happiness? The one thing that you kept from me?"

He stared at me in confusion.

"I don't understand. What did I deny you? What did you ever ask for that I turned down?"

"You let me live under one cloud after another, just so you could play the sun and give me rays of hope and happiness whenever it pleased you. You were afraid that if I wasn't sad, that if I didn't live under a dark and gloomy sky, you could never be something bright and alive to me.

"So you let me think that Luke didn't care for me, when in fact you had trapped him within his own prison of greed."

"But . ." He started forward, hoping to embrace me. I continued to back away from his desk.

"And you let me believe that Troy was dead," I said. The words fell like thunder, echoing in the room. He whitened so, he looked like he had been turned into a statue of salt. I didn't want to give away the secret that Troy and I had held between us. It had been all that was left that was precious and special. But I suddenly realized that if Tony were honest and if he really wanted me to return to Farthy, he would have told me about Troy not being dead and brought me back to help him regain a normal life.

But he didn't want me to return to Troy; he wanted me to return to him and to him only.

"You know?" he whispered.

"Yes. I found him out just before he left."

"It was his wish that you not know, not mine," Tony pleaded quickly. That moment Anthony Townsend Tatterton looked as cheap and as small as a petty thief to me, a petty thief who had tried to lie his way out of his guilt, and when one lie didn't work, he tried another and finally even betrayed those closest to him, all to save himself.

"But you knew that he said those things because he was despondent, because he believed we could never be anything to each other. You could have done more. If you would have told me and I could have seen him . . . by the time I did discover him, it was too late.

"And so he's gone," I said softly, "and a love that was truly unselfish has been lost."

I looked up at him, the tears now streaming down my face.

"For all I know, you drove Jillian into her madness," I said. "And you helped drive Troy into oblivion. Now," I concluded, standing straight, "you've driven me away."

"Heaven?' he screamed as I turned and rushed out of his office. I didn't look back. I ran up the stairs to my suite and began to pack.

In the morning I would take Drake and leave Farthy. This time I would leave forever.

I looked in on Drake and found that he had brought his blanket up and nearly over his head as if to shut out the world around him It was the way I felt, too, but I knew that hide as you would, you couldn't escape from the truth. Truth had its way of finding the cracks and the openings in whatever walls of makebelieve you set up around yourself, even if you were rich. I felt as though everything around me here was made up of crepe paper and cellophane. It was pretty and bright and colorful, but one strong wind could blow it all away and leave you standing naked, shivering under bruised and angry clouds.

I brought his blanket down around his neck, brushed away some strands of hair from his eyes, and kissed him softly on the cheek. Tomorrow I would take him to Winnerow. As suddenly as he had been brought into this richly elegant and luxurious world, he would be taken from it. I knew it would confuse him, but I also now knew that this was no place for him to grow up. My bloodline might have started here at Farthy, but my heartline was tied to Winnerow, tied to that simpler world where I could look out of the windows of the Hasbrouck House and see the Willies.

It was better that Drake grow up in that sunlight, surrounded by those sounds, than here in the long, empty halls of Farthinggale, surrounded by the moaning ghosts who haunted the Tattertons.

I did some packing for both of us until I grew too tired and then prepared myself for bed. Even though I was both physically and emotionally exhausted, I lay there staring into the darkness, my eyes wide open. I wondered about Logan and about the life we would make for ourselves in Winnerow now. I hoped I could make him understand why I wanted no more to do with Farthinggale Manor and little to do with Tony. Of course, I wouldn't tell him about Troy, but he would know what Tony had done to keep Luke away from me, and I hoped he would be just as upset about it as I was. Mostly, I hoped he would hold me near to him, and in time we could recapture that wonderfully exciting feeling we once shared for each other when we were high school students.

I couldn't help thinking about Troy as well. I wondered where he was and how much he would know of my life, how much he would know of what had happened and would happen. Would he be watching nearby as he had watched my wedding reception? Or had he truly cut himself off from everything concerning me and Farthy?

Every passing day now he became more and more of an illusion, the personification of truly ideal love, the unattainable perfect love, the love dreams are made of, the love you destroy simply by touching it, just as you destroy a beautiful, perfect soap bubble the moment the tips of your fingers graze its thin, fragile surface. Like the soap bubble, such love was something to watch or to hope for, but something never to hold.