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"You can't mean this," she said.

"I am booked on the next ship out of Alexandria," I said.

"I will go to Naples, then on to Barcelona. I will leave from Lisbon for the New World. "

Her face seemed to narrow, her features to sharpen. Her lips moved just a little but she didn't say anything. And then I saw the tears rising in her eyes, and I felt her emotion as if it were reaching out to touch me. I looked away, busied myself with something on the desk, then simply held my hands very still so they wouldn't tremble. I thought, I am glad Nicki took his hands with him into the fire, because if he had not, I would have to go back to Paris and get them before I could go on.

"But you can't be going to him!" she whispered.

Him? Oh. My father.

"What does it matter? I am going!" I said.

She moved her head just a little in a negative gesture. She came near to the desk. Her step was lighter than Armand's.

"Has any of our kind ever made such a crossing?" she asked under her breath.

"Not that I know of. In Rome they said no. "

"Perhaps it can't be done, this crossing. "

"It can be done. You know it can. " We had sailed the seas before in our cork-lined coffins. Pity the leviathan who troubles me.

She came even nearer and looked down at me. And the pain in her face couldn't be concealed anymore. Ravishing she was. Why had I ever dressed her in ball gowns or plumed hats or pearls?

"You know where to reach me," I said, but the bitterness of my tone had no conviction to it. "The addresses of my banks in London and Rome. Those banks have lived as long as vampires already. They will always be there. You know all this, you've always known. . . "

"Stop," she said under her breath. "Don't say these things to me. "

What a lie all this was, what a travesty. It was just the kind of exchange she had always detested, the kind of talk she could never make herself. In my wildest imaginings, I had never expected it to be like this -- that I should say cold things, that she should cry. I thought I would bawl when she said she was going. I thought I would throw myself at her very feet.

We looked at each other for a long moment, her eyes tinged with red, her mouth almost quivering.

And then I lost my control.

I rose and I went to her, and I gathered her small, delicate limbs in my arms. I determined not to let her go, no matter how she struggled. But she didn't struggle, and we both cried almost silently as if we couldn't make ourselves stop. But she didn't yield to me. She didn't melt in my embrace.

And then she drew back. She stroked my hair with both her hands, and leant forward and kissed me on the lips, and then moved away lightly and soundlessly.

"All right, then, my darling," she said.

I shook my head. Words and words and words unspoken. She had no use for them, and never had.

In her slow, languid way, hips moving gracefully, she went to the door to the garden and looked up at the night sky before she looked back at me.

"You must promise me something," she said finally.

Bold young Frenchman who moved with the grace of an Arab through places in a hundred cities where only an alleycat could safely pass.

"Of course," I answered. But I was so broken in spirit now I didn't want to talk anymore. The colors dimmed. The night was neither hot nor cold. I wished she would just go, yet I was terrified of the moment when that would happen, when I couldn't get her back.

"Promise me you will never seek to end it," she said, "without first being with me, without our coming together again. "

For a moment I was too surprised to answer. Then I said:

"I will never seek to end it. " I was almost scornful. "So you have my promise. It's simple enough to give. But what about you giving a promise to me? That you'll let me know where you go from here, where I can reach you -- that you won't vanish as if you were something I imagined -- "

I stopped. There had been a note of urgency in my voice, of rising hysteria. I couldn't imagine her writing a letter or posting it or doing any of the things that mortals habitually did. It was as if no common nature united us, or ever had.