here, in other places. Always I'll know where you are!' I said.
"She put her arms around my neck. She held me tight, and I closed my eyes and buried my face in her hair. I was covering her neck with my kisses. I had hold of her round, firm little arms. I was kissing them, kissing the soft indentation of the flesh in the crooks of her arms, her wrists, her open palms. I felt her forgers stroking my hair, my face.'Whatever you wish,' she vowed.'Whatever you wish.'
"'Are you happy? Do you have what you want?' I begged her.
"'Yes, Louis.' She held me against her dress, her fingers clasping the back of my neck.'I have all that I want` But do you truly know what you want?' She was lifting my face so I had to look into her eyes.'It's you I fear for, you who might be making the mistake. Why don't you leave Paris with us!' the said suddenly.'We have the world, come with us!'
"'No.' I drew back from her.'You want it to as it was with Lestat. It can't be that way again, ever. It won't be.'
"'It will be something new and different with Madoleine. I don't ask for that again. It was I who put an end to that,' she said.'But do you truly understand what you are choosing in Armand?'
"I tanned away from her. There was something stubborn and mysterious inn her dislike of him, in her failure to understand him. She would say again that he wished her death, which I did not believe. She didn't realize what I realized: he could not want her death, because I didn't want it. But how could I explain this to her without sounding pompous and blind in my love of him.'It's meant to be. It's almost that sort of direction,' I said, as if it were just coming clear to me under the pressure of her doubts.'He alone can give me the strength to be what I am. I can't continue to live divided and consumed with misery. Either I go with him, or I die,' I said.'And it's something else, which is irrational and unexplainable and which satisfies only me....
"'Which is?' she asked.
"'That I love him,' I said.
"'No doubt you do,' she mused.'But then, you could love even me.'
"'Claudia, Claudia.' I held her close to me, and felt her weight on my knee. She drew up close to my chest.
"'T only hope that when you have need of me, you can find me... ' she whispered.'That I can get back to you... I've hurt you so often, I've caused you so much pain.' Her words trailed off. She was resting still against me. I felt her weight, thinking, In a little while, I won't have her anymore. I want now simply to hold her. There has always been such pleasure in that simple thing. Her weight against me, this hand resting against my neck.
"It seemed a lamp died somewhere. That from the cool, damp air that much light was suddenly, soundlessly subtracted. I was sitting on the verge of dream. Had I been mortal I would have been content to sleep there. And in that drowsy, comfortable state I had a strange, habitual mortal feeling, that the sun would wake me gently later and I would have that rich, habitual vision of the ferns in the sunshine and the sunshine an the droplets of rain. I indulged that feeling. I half closed my eyes.
"Often afterwards I tried to remember those moments. Tried over and over to recall just what it was in those rooms as we rested there, that began to disturb me, should have disturbed me. How, being off my guard, I was somehow insensible to the subtle changes which must have been taking place there. Long after, bruised and robbed and embittered beyond my wildest dreams, I sifted through those moments, those drowsy quiet early-hour moments when the clock ticked almost imperceptibly on the mantelpiece, and the sky grew paler and paler; and all I could remember-despite the desperation with which I lengthened and fixed that time, in which I held out my hands to stop the clock-all I could remember was the soft changing of tight.
"On guard, I would never have let it pass. Deluded with larger concerns, I made no note of it. A lamp gone out, a candle extinguished by the shiver of its own hot pool of wax. My eyes half shut, I had the sense then. of impending