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"When a being reveals his pain in such a torrent, you are bound to respect the whole of the tragedy. You have to try to comprehend. And such helplessness, such despair is almost incomprehensible to me. That's why I think of Marius. Marius I understand. You I don't understand. "

Why?

Silence.

Didn't he deserve the truth?

"I've been a rebel always," I said. "You've been the slave of everything that ever claimed you. "

"I was the leader of my coven!"

"No. You were the slave of Marius and then of the Children of Darkness. You fell under the spell of one and then the other. What you suffer now is the absence of a spell. I think I shudder that you caused me so to understand it for a little while, to know it as if I were a different being than I am. "

"Doesn't matter," he said, eyes still on the fire. "You think too much in terms of decision and action. This tale is no explanation. And I am not a being who requires a respectful acknowledgment in your thoughts or in words. And we all know the answer you have given is too immense to be voiced and we all three of us know that it is final. What I don't know is why. So I am a creature very different from you, and so you cannot understand me. Why can't I go with you? I will do whatever you wish if you take me with you. I will be under your spell. "

I thought of Marius with his brush and the pots of egg tempera.

"How could you have ever believed anything that they told you after they burned those paintings?" I asked. "How could you have given yourself over to them?"

Agitation, rising anger.

Caution in Gabrielle's face, but not fear.

"And you, when you stood on the stage and you saw the audience screaming to get out of the theater -- how my followers described this to me, the vampire terrifying the crowd and the crowd streaming into the boulevard du Temple -- what did you believe? That you did not belong among mortals, that's what you believed. You knew you did not. And there was no band of fiends in hooded robes to tell you. You knew. So Marius did not belong among mortals. So I did not. "

"Ah, but it's different. "

"No, it is not. That's why you scorn the Theater of the Vampires which is now at this very moment working out its little dramas to bring in the gold from the boulevard crowds. You do not wish to deceive as Marius deceived. It divides you ever more from mankind. You want to pretend to be mortal, but to deceive makes you angry and it makes you kill. "

"In that moment on the stage," I said, "I revealed myself. I did the very opposite of deceiving. I wanted somehow in making manifest the monstrosity of myself to be joined with my fellow humans again. Better they should run from me than not see me. Better they should know I was something monstrous than fo

r me to glide through the world unrecognized by those upon whom I preyed. "

"But it was not better. "

"No. What Marius did was better. He did not deceive. "

"Of course he did. He fooled everyone!"

"No. He found a way to imitate mortal life. To be one with mortals. He slew only the evildoer, and he painted as mortals paint. Angels and blue skies, clouds, those are the things you made me see when you were telling. He created good things. And I see wisdom in him and a lack of vanity. He did not need to reveal himself. He had lived a thousand years and he believed more in the vistas of heaven that he painted than in himself. "

Confusion.

Doesn't matter now, devils who paint angels.

"Those are only metaphors," I said. "And it does matter! If you are to rebuild, if you are to find the Devil's Road again, it does matter! There are ways for us to exist. If I could only imitate life, just find a way. . .

"You say things that mean nothing to me. We are the abandoned of God. "

Gabrielle glanced at him suddenly. "Do you believe in God?" she asked.

"Yes, always in God," he answered. "It is Satan -- our master -- who is the fiction and that is the fiction which has betrayed me. "

"Oh, then you are truly damned," I said. "And you know full well that your retreat into the fraternity of the Children of Darkness was a retreat from a sin that was not a sin. "

Anger.

"Your heart breaks for something you'll never have," he countered, his voice rising suddenly. "You brought Gabrielle and Nicolas over the barrier to you, but you could not go back. "