was calling my name. I turned, and, through the tangled vines, I saw her distant and tiny, like a white flame on the faint luminescent shell road.
"That morning, she wound her arms around me, pressed her head against my chest in the closeness of the coffin, whispering she loved me, that we were free now of Lestat forever.'I love you, Louis,' she said over and over as the darkness finally came down with the lid and mercifully blotted out all consciousness.
"When I awoke, she was going through his things. It was a tirade, silent, controlled, but filled with a fierce anger. She pulled the contents from cabinets, emptied drawers onto the carpets, pulled one jacket after another from his armoires, turning the pockets inside out, throwing the coins and theater tickets and bits and pieces of paper away. I stood in the. door of his room, astonished, watching her. His coffin lay there, heaped with scarves and pieces of tapestry. I had the compulsion to open it. I had the wish to see him there.'Nothing!' she finally said in disgust. .She wadded the clothes into the grate.'Not a hint of where he came from, who made him!' she said.'Not a scrap' She looked to me as if for sympathy. I turned away from her. I was unable to look at her. I moved back into that bedroom which I kept for myself, that room filled with my own books and what things I'd saved from my mother and sister, and I sat on .the bed. I could hear her at the door, but I would not look at her.'He deserved to die!' she said to me.
"'Then we deserve to die. The same way. Every night of our lives,' I said back to her.'Go away from me.' It was as if my words were my thoughts, my mind alone only formless confusion.'I'll care for you because you can't care for yourself. But I don't want you near me. Sleep in that box you bought for yourself. Don't come near me.'
"'I told you I was going to do it. I told you . : ' she said. Never had her voice sounded so fragile, so like a little silvery bell. I looked up at her, startled but unshaken. Her face seemed not her face. Never had anyone shaped such agitation into the features of a doll.'Louis, I told you!' she said, her lips quivering.'I did it for us. So we could be free.' I couldn't stand the sight of her. Her beauty, her seeming innocence, and this terrible agitation. I went past her, perhaps knocking her backwards, I don't know. And I was almost to the railing of the steps when I heard a strange sound.
"Never in all the years of our life together had I heard this sound. Never since the night long ago when I had first found her, a mortal child, clinging to her mother. She was crying!
"It drew me back now against my will. Yet it sounded so unconscious, so hopeless, as though she meant no one to hear it, or didn't care if it were heard by the whole world. I found her lying on my bed in the place where I often sat to read, her knees drawn up, her whole frame shaking with her sobs. The sound of it was terrible. It was more heartfelt, more awful than her mortal crying had ever been. I sat down slowly, gently, beside her and put my hand on her shoulder. She lifted her head, startled, her eyes wide, her mouth trembling. Her face was stained with tears, tears that were tinted with blood. Her eyes brimmed with them, and the faint touch of red stained her tiny hand. She didn't seem to be conscious of this, to see it. She pushed her hair back from her forehead. Her body quivered then with a long, low, pleading sob.
"'Louis... if I lose you, I have nothing,' she whispered.'I would undo it to have you back. I can't undo what I've done.' She put her arms around me, climbing up against me, sobbing against my heart. My hands were reluctant to touch her; and then they moved as if I couldn't stop them, to enfold her and hold her and stroke her hair.'I can't live without you... : she whispered.'I would die rather than live without you. I would die the same way he died. I can't bear you to look at me the way you did. I cannot bear