of the Third Movement built to its most brilliant climax, and I thought my heart would break.
It was only then, as the final bars were played out, that I realized something which should have been obvious to me from the start.
It wasn't Sybelle playing this music. It couldn't be. I knew every nuance of Sybelle's interpretations. I knew her modes of expression; I knew the tonal qualities that her particular touch invariably produced. Though her interpretations were infinitely spontaneous, nevertheless I knew her music, as one knows the writing of another or the style of a painter's work. This wasn't Sybelle.
And then the real truth dawned on me. It was Sybelle, but Sybelle was no longer Sybelle.
For a second I couldn't believe it. My heart stopped in my chest.
Then I walked into the house, a steady furious walk that would have stopped for nothing but to find the truth of what I believed.
In an instant I saw it with my own eyes. In a splendid room, they were gathered together, the beautiful lithe figure of Pandora in a gown of brown silk, girdled at the waist in the old Grecian style, Marius in a light velvet smoking jacket over silk trousers, and my children, my beautiful children, radiant Benji in his white gown, dancing barefoot and wildly around the room with his fingers flung out as if to grasp the air in them, and Sybelle, my gorgeous Sybelle, with her arms bare too in a dress of deep rose silk, at the piano, her long hair swept back over her shoulders, just striding into the First Movement again.
All of them vampires, every one.
I clenched my teeth hard, and covered my mouth lest my roars wake the world. I roared and roared into my collapsed hands.
I cried out the single defiant syllable No, No, No, over and over again. I could say nothing else, scream nothing else, do nothing else.
I cried and cried.
I bit down so hard with my teeth that my jaw ached, and my hands shuddered like wings of a bird that wouldn't let me shut up my mouth tight enough, and once again the tears streamed out of my eyes as thickly as they had when I kissed Lestat.
No, No, No, No!
Then suddenly I flung out my hands, coiling them into fists, and the roar would have got loose, it would have burst from me like a raging stream, but Marius took hold of me with great force and flung me against his chest and buried my face against himself.
I struggled to get free. I kicked at him with all of my strength, and I beat at him with my fists.
"How could you do it!" I roared.
His hands enclosed my head in a hopeless trap, and his lips kept covering me with kisses I hated and detested and fought off with desperate flinging gestures.
"How could you? How dare you? How could you?"
At last I gained enough leverage to smash his face with blow after blow.
But what good did it do me? How weak and meaningless were my fists against his strength. How helpless and foolish and small were my gestures, and he stood there, bearing it all, his face unspeakably sad, and his own eyes dry yet full of caring.
"How could you do it, how could you do it!" I demanded. I would not cease.
But suddenly Sybelle rose from the piano, and with her arms out ran to me. And Benji, who had been watching all the while, rushed to me also, and they imprisoned me gently in their tender arms.
"Oh, Armand, don't be angry, don't be, don't be sad," Sybelle cried softly against my ear. "Oh, my magnificent Armand, don't be sad, don't be. Don't be cross. We're with you forever."
"Armand, we are with you! He did the magic," cried Benji. "We didn't have to be born from black eggs, you Dybbuk, to tell us such a tale! Armand, we will never die now, we will never be sick, and never hurt and never afraid again." He jumped up and down with glee and spun in another mirthful circle, astonished and laughing at his new vigor, that he could leap so high and with such grace. "Armand, we are so happy."
"Oh, yes, please," cried Sybelle softly in her deeper gentler voice. "I love you so much, Armand, I love you so very very much. We had to do it. We had to. We had to do it, to always and forever be with you."