flannel, a white cotton shirt, and a rather shapeless jacket of old wool. All these clothes were a little too big. They had been David’s clothes. Even the fur-lined slippers were too big. But I wanted to be dressed. There were some undistinguished cotton undergarments also, of the kind everyone wears in the twentieth century, and a comb for my hair.

I took my time with everything, noting only a throbbing soreness as I pulled the cloth over my skin. My scalp hurt when I combed my hair. Finally I simply shook it until all the sand and dust was out of it, tumbling down into the thick carpet, and disappearing conveniently enough from view. Putting on the slippers was very nice. But what I wanted now was a mirror.

I found one in the hallway, an old dark mirror in a heavy gilded frame. Enough light came from the open library door for me to see myself fairly well.

For a moment, I could not quite believe what I beheld. My skin was smooth all over, as completely unblemished as it had ever been. But it was an amber color now, the very color of the frame of the mirror, and gleaming only slightly, no more than that of a mortal who had spent a long luxurious sojourn in tropical seas.

My eyebrows and eyelashes shone brightly, as is always the case with the blond hair of such sun-browned individuals, and the few lines of my face, left to me by the Dark Gift, were a little bit more deeply etched than before. I refer here to two small commas at the corners of my mouth, the result of smiling so much when I was alive; and to a few very fine lines at the corners of my eyes, and the trace of a line or two across my forehead. Very nice to have them back for I had not seen them in a long time.

My hands had suffered more. They were darker than my face, and very human-looking, with many little creases, which put me in mind at once of how many fine wrinkles mortal hands do have.

The nails still glistened in a manner that might alarm humans, but it would be a simple thing to rub a bit of ash over them. My eyes, of course, were another matter. Never had they seemed so bright and so iridescent. But a pair of smoke-colored glasses was all that I needed there. The bigger mask of black glasses was no longer necessary to cover up the shining white skin.

Ye gods, how perfectly wonderful, I thought, staring at my own reflection. You look almost like a man! Almost like a man! I could feel a dull ache all over in these burnt tissues, but that felt good to me, as if it were reminding me of the shape of my body, and its human limits.

I could have shouted. Instead I prayed. May this last, and if it doesn’t I’d go through it all again.

Then it occurred to me, rather crushingly—I was supposed to be destroying myself, not perfecting my appearance so that I could move around better among men. I was supposed to be dying. And if the sun over the Gobi Desert hadn’t done it … if all the long day of lying in the sun, and then the second sunrise …

Ah, but you coward, I thought, you could have found some way to stay above the surface for that second day! Or could you?

“Well, thank God you chose to come back.”

I turned and saw David coming down the hall. He had only just returned home, his dark heavy coat was wet from the snow, and he hadn’t even removed his boots.

He came to an abrupt halt and inspected me from head to toe, straining to see in the shadows. “Ah, the clothes will do,” he said. “Good Lord, you look like one of those beachcombers, those surf people, those young men who live eternally in resorts.”

I smiled.

He reached out, rather bravely, I thought, and took my hand and led me into the library, where the fire was quite vigorously burning by now. He studied me once again.

“There’s no more pain,” he said tentatively.

“There is sensation, but it’s not exactly what we call pain. I’m going out for a little while. Oh, don’t worry. I’ll be back. I’m thirsting. I have to hunt.”

His face went blank, but not so blank that I didn’t see the blood in his cheeks, or all the tiny