Jean-Pierre II snorted with derision, and shuffled and cut and shuffled and dealt out his cards, one after another after another. He much preferred his game.

The Bloodstone.

Because of a vow she had made as a young woman in her twenties, many years ago, after the second, or possibly the third, of her fiances died (and one of the fiances was a handsome thirty-year-old naval officer whose father owned a string of textile mills in the Mohawk Valley) great-aunt Veronica never emerged from her suite of rooms before sunset, and never wore anything but black. "Anyone as unhappy as I should hide away from the sun," she said. It was thought that she had imagined herself a beauty at one time-and perhaps she had been a beauty-and now she was in mourning not only for the two or three men who might have saved her from a perpetual virginity, but for her own youthful self: for the girlhood that must have seemed at one time inviolable, but which gradually eroded until nothing remained of it but the stubborn chaste irrelevant vow she had made, evidently before witnesses: "Anyone as unhappy as I should remain hidden away from people, so as not to upset them," she said boldly. "Ah, I am accursed!"

Because of the vow Germaine rarely saw her great-aunt, and then only in the winter months when the sun set early and Germaine's bedtime wasn't until well after dark. The surprise of great-aunt Veronica was her ordinariness: if the children hadn't known of her unhappy loves and her curious penitential vows they would have thought her far less interesting than their grandparents, and certainly far less interesting than their temperamental great-grandmother Elvira (shortly to become, at the age of 101, a bride again). Great-aunt Veronica was a plump, full-hipped and full-breasted woman of moderate height, with a placid sheep's face, smallish hazel eyes with innumerable blue tucks and pleats about them, a mouth that might have been charming except for its complacent set, and a fairly smooth, unlined skin that varied extremely in tone: sometimes it was quite pale, at other times mottled and flushed, especially about the cheeks, and at other times, still, it was ruddy, coarse, and heated, almost brick-red, as if she had been exercising violently in the sun. (Though of course she never exercised. It seemed to tire the poor woman even to walk downstairs, which she did with an air of listlessness that not even the promise of excellent claret and excellent food could dispel.) Absolutely unexceptional were her pastimes: she did needlepoint, like the other old women, but would never have had the stamina or the imagination to create works of art like aunt Matilde; she played gin rummy from time to time, for modest stakes; she gossiped about relatives and neighbors, usually with an air of languid incredulity. She admired good china but had never built up a collection of her own. She could not tolerate anything but the finest linen against her skin (or so she liked to say), and of course she abhorred machine-made things, most of all machine-made lace. (All the Bellefleur women, even Leah, abhorred machine-made lace, no matter that the family had recently acquired a lace-manufacturing factory on the Alder River.) Her manners were mincing: she was really too much: sitting primly at the dining room table, night after night, sipping daintily at her wine, drinking a spoonful or two of soup, making a show of playing with her food as if the very notion of an appetite were abhorrent. (Indeed, it was a family joke of long standing that great-aunt Veronica gorged herself in her room, before coming downstairs for dinner, in order to preserve the myth of her girlish fastidiousness, decades after the myth had ceased to have any meaning-or anyone who might care to believe in it.) That Veronica had a dainty appetite was bluntly belied by her full, comfortable figure, and the suggestion of a second chin, and her obvious air of superb health. For a woman of her age-! people were always remarking, in wonderment. Though no one knew exactly how old she was. Bromwell had once calculated that she must be much older than grandmother Cornelia, which would have made her more than seventy, but everyone laughed him out of the room-one of the few instances in which the child was demonstrably mistaken. For great-aunt Veronica looked, even at her most torpid, no more than fifty; at her freshest she might have been as young as forty. Her small undistinguished eyes sometimes shone with an inexplicable emotion that might have been a pleasure in her own enigmatic being.

Upon occasion she wore open-necked gowns, which exposed her pale, rather lardish skin, and the beautiful dark-heart-shaped stone she wore about her neck on a thin gold chain. Asked about the stone she always gazed down upon it sorrowfully, and touched it, and said after a long painful moment that it was a bloodstone-a gift from the first man she had ever loved-the only man (she saw this now, so many decades after) she had ever loved. A deep green stone, flecked with red jasper, glowing and fading with variations in light, pulling heavily on the thin chain: a stone heart the size of a child's heart. Is it beautiful, do you think it's beautiful? she would ask, frowning, peering down at it so that her small pudgy chin creased against her chest. She couldn't, she declared, judge any longer, herself. For it had been so many, many years since Count Ragnar Norst had given her the bloodstone.

But of course it was beautiful, people said. If one liked bloodstones.

NORST INTRODUCED HIMSELF to Veronica Bellefleur at a charity ball in Manhattan, attended, it was said, by many persons of questionable background. Though Veronica, then a comely young woman of twenty-four who wore her red-blond hair braided and wound about her head like a crown, and who distinguished herself by her high tinkling spontaneous laughter, had, of course, a chaperone, and would not ordinarily have countenanced a stranger's approach-let alone a stranger's daring in actually taking her hand and raising it to his lips!-there was from the very first something so peremptory and at the same time so artless about his manner that she could not assert herself against it. In handsome though rather dated formal attire, with a very dark goatee and gleaming dark curls on either side of his forehead, Count Ragnar Norst identified himself ambiguously as the youngest son in a family of merchants who owned a shipping line that spanned the globe, doing trade in New Guinea and Patagonia and the Ivory Coast, and as a diplomatic attache whose embassy was, of course, in Washington, and as a "poet-adventurer" whose only desire was to live each day to the fullest. Veronica's confused impression of Norst upon that occasion was a positive but troubled one-he was attractive, but how intensely, how queerly, he had smiled at her! And with what unwelcome intimacy he had kissed her hand, as if they were old, intimate friends. . . .

Yet she dreamt of him almost at once. So that when he reappeared in her life some weeks later, at a crowded reception at the home of Senator Payne, not far from Bellefleur Manor, she greeted him with an unthinking vivacity-actually held her hand out to him, as if they were old friends. It was not until he seized the hand and raised it to his warm lips and bowed over it that Veronica realized the audacity of her behavior, but by then it was too late, for Norst was chattering to her about any number of things-the weather, the beautiful mountain scenery, the "rustic" lakeside cottage he had rented for the summer at Lake Avernus (about twelve miles south of Lake Noir), his hopes for seeing her as frequently as possible. Veronica laughed her high scandalized laugh, and blushed, but Norst took no heed: he thought her, in his own words, "dreadfully charming." And so very American.

It soon came about that Norst was visiting Veronica at the castle, driving over for luncheon or high tea in his extraordinary black car-a Lancia Lambda, it was, a saloon model that stood high off the ground on wooden-spoked wheels, comfortably roomy enough so that Veronica's wide-brimmed hats were not in the slightest disturbed as she climbed in. He drove her along the Nautauga River, and down through the picturesque rolling countryside to Lake Avernus, which, already in those days, was beginning to be known as a resort area for well-to-do Manhattanites who hadn't the interest or the wealth to acquire a genuine Chautauqua camp of the sort Raphael Bellefleur had built on the northern shore of Lake Noir. On those long leisurely drives-which poor Veronica was to remember the rest of her life-the couple talked of innumerable casual things, laughing frequently (for surely, from the start, they were half in love), and though Norst questioned Veronica closely about her life, her daily life, as if every detail about her delighted him, he was conspicuously evasive in speaking of his own life: he had "duties" in regard to his family's shipping line which called him to New York often, he had "duties" in regard to the Swedish Embassy in Washington which called him there, often, and the rest of the time, well, the rest of the time was given over to . . . to his obligations to himself.

"For we have a grave responsibility, do we not, my dear Miss Bellefleur," he would say, squeezing her hand in excitement, "a responsibility entrusted to us at birth: the need, the command to fulfill ourselves, to develop our souls to their utmost? For this we need not only time and cunning, but courage, even audacity . . . and the sympathy of kindred souls."

Veronica was capable of intelligent skepticism in regard to innumerable domestic matters (dressmaker's and haberdashers' promises, for instance), and as a child of thirteen she had insolently repudiated the "God" of Unitarianism (for Veronica's branch of the family was solemnly experimenting with forms of Christianity they considered rational, since the irrational forms were too embarrassing altogether); she was not a stupid young woman; and yet, in Norst's charismatic presence, she seemed to lose all her powers of judgment, and allowed his words to wash over her. . . . His voice was liquid and sensuous, the first genuinely charming, even seductive, voice the unfortunate young woman had ever experienced. Ah, it hardly mattered what he said! It hardly mattered: gossip about mutual acquaintances at Lake Avernus, gossip about state and federal politics, praise for the Bellefleur estate and farm, fulsome flattery directed toward Veronica herself (who, in the flush of giddiness attending her "love" for the count, was undeniably beautiful, and not at all innocent of the effect of her cruel wasp-waisted corsets on the snug-fitting silk gowns she wore). Veronica gazed upon Norst with a girlish fascination she did not even try to hide, and murmured in agreement, yes, yes, whatever he said, it sounded so utterly plausible.

It was a most unorthodox courtship. Norst would disappear suddenly, leaving behind only a few scribbled words of apology (but never of explanation) with a manservant; and then he would reappear, a day or twelve days later, never doubting but that Veronica would see him-as if she hadn't innumerable suitors who treated her more considerately. As if she hadn't, Veronica's parents and brother chided her, any pride. But there was Ragnar Norst in his aristocratic car, which gleamed like a hearse, and gave off a scent (which in time became quite sweet, in Veronica's opinion) of wax polish, leather, finely-veneered wood, and something mustily damp, like a bog made rich by centuries of decay. At all times he wore impeccably formal attire-frock coats, handsome silk cravats, dazzling-white cuffs with pearl, gold, onyx, and bloodstone cuff links, starched collars, plissed shirts-and his pomaded hair with its twin curls was always perfect. Perhaps his skin was too swarthy, and his black eyes too black, and his moods too unpredictable (for if, one day, he was ebullient, gay, chattersome, and exhilarated, the next day he might be apathetic, or irritable, or melancholy, or so serious in his talk to Veronica of "the need to fulfill one's destiny" that the young woman turned aside in distress) . . . and in any case, as the Bellefleurs were beginning to say, more and more emphatically, there was something not altogether clear about him. Were the Norsts, indeed, an "ancient" Swedish family? Did they own a shipping line? But which shipping line? Was Norst associated with the Swedish Embassy under his own name, or under an incognito? Was "Norst" itself an incognito? It is quite possible, Veronica's brother Aaron said, even granting the man (which I don't) his identity, that he is involved in espionage of some sort. . . . It hasn't been our habit, after all, to trust foreigners.

Veronica tearfully agreed; yet, once in Norst's presence, she forgot everything. He was so manly. He could entertain her for hours with Swedish folksongs played on a curious little instrument that resembled a zither, and produced a keening and yet lulling, almost soporific, sound, a "music" so intimate that it played along her nerves and pulses, and left her quite drained. He told her of his many travels-to Patagonia, to the African interior, to Egypt, Mesopotamia, Jordan, India, New Guinea, Styria, the land of Ganz-and began to intimate, more and more explicitly, that she would soon accompany him, if she wished. And then he addressed her as no other man had ever addressed her, seizing her limp hand and raising it to his lips, kissing it passionately: murmuring shamelessly of "love" and "kindred souls" and "mutual destiny" and the need for lovers to "surrender" themselves completely to one another. He called her "dearest," "my dear Veronica," "my dear beautiful Veronica," and did not seem to notice her discomfort; he spoke in a tremulous voice of "rapture" and "passion"-that "unexplored country" which a "virgin like yourself" must one day traverse, but only in the company of a lover who had opened himself completely to her. There must be, he cautioned, no secrets between lovers-absolutely no corners or recesses of the soul kept in darkness-otherwise the raptures of love will be merely physical, and short-lived, and if the lovers die into each other they will die literally, and not be resurrected-did she understand? Ah, it was imperative that she understand! And he embraced her, fairly shuddering with emotion; and poor Veronica nearly fainted. (For no man had ever spoken to her like this, nor had anyone so abruptly, and so passionately, taken her in his arms.) "But you shouldn't! That isn't nice! Oh-that isn't nice!" Veronica gasped. And, like a frightened child, she burst into peals of laughter. "That isn't-nice-"

That night she retired early, her head reeling as if she had drunk too much wine, and she was hardly conscious of pulling the bedcovers up before she slipped-sank-was pulled into-sleep. And in the morning she found the heart-shaped bloodstone on the pillow beside her!-simply lying on the pillow beside her. (She knew at once, of course, that it was a gift of Norst's, for two or three days earlier, as they dined in the Avernus Inn overlooking the magnificent lake, she had made a fuss over his cuff links-she'd never seen so richly dark a stone before, and found its scintillating depths quite fascinating. The family jewels she had inherited-a single sapphire, some modest-carated diamonds, a handful of opals, garnets, pearls-struck her suddenly as uninteresting. Norst's bloodstone cuff links might very well be, as he insisted gaily, inexpensive, even commonplace, but they exerted a fascination upon Veronica, who found it difficult to take her eyes off them during the meal.) And now-what a surprise! For several minutes she lay without moving, staring at the large stone, which was both green and red, and layered with darkness: could such a beautiful object be, indeed, commonplace?

He had gotten Veronica's maid to tiptoe into her room and lay the stone beside her, of course, and though the girl denied it-for her mistress was not so flummoxed by passion as to fail to wonder at the propriety of Norst's tipping (or bribing) a domestic servant-Veronica knew that this was the case: an audacious gesture, of which her family would angrily disapprove, but one which (ah, she couldn't help herself) quite charmed her.

She slipped the bloodstone on a gold chain, and wore it about her neck that very day.

THE MORE FREQUENTLY Veronica saw Ragnar Norst, the less she felt she knew of him; it frightened her, and excited her, to realize that she would never know him at all. For one thing, his moods were so capricious. . . . He could start off on a walk with her in excellent high spirits, obviously filled to the brim with energy; fifteen minutes later he would be suddenly weary, and ask if Veronica wouldn't mind sitting on a bench for a while, and simply gazing, without speaking, at the landscape. Or perhaps he was sweetly melancholy, and kept staring mournfully into her eyes, as if he were yearning, starving, for something, for her . . . and then again, a few minutes later, he would be telling one of his lengthy, convoluted folktales, set in Sweden or Denmark or Norway, punctuated with bursts of laughter (for some of the tales, though sanctified by tradition, struck the blushing young woman as distinctly ribald-not really suited for her ears). He was at all times unusually perceptive, however: she felt that he was seeing and hearing and thinking with an almost preternatural clarity. At one unfortunate luncheon, high on the terrace in the walled garden, Veronica's brother Aaron-a 230-pounder with an exaggerated sense of his own powers of ratiocination, far more suited for hunting than for civilized discourse-began to interrogate Norst almost rudely about his background ("Ah, you claim there is Persian blood on your mother's side of the family?-indeed? And on your father's side, what sort of blood, do you think-?"), and it was quite remarkable to witness Norst's transformation: he seemed immediately to sense that a direct confrontation with this brute would be not only disastrous, but distasteful, and so he replied to Aaron's questions in a courteous, even humble manner, readily admitting when necessary that he couldn't altogether explain certain . . . certain discrepancies . . . no, he regretted that he couldn't account for . . . not altogether . . . not at the present time. Veronica had never witnessed a performance of such exquisite subtlety and tact; she gazed upon him adoringly, and did not even trouble to be angry with her boorish brother (he was five years her senior, and imagined that he knew more than she, and that a great deal of what he knew had to do with her), even though his questioning had brought droplets of perspiration to Norst's forehead.

And then, afterward, it struck her-Persian blood! But how marvelous! How enchanting! Persian blood: which accounted for his swarthy skin and his dark mesmerizing eyes. Little as she knew about Swedes she knew even less about Persians and found the combination totally enchanting. . . .

"That 'Count' is an impostor," Aaron said. "He doesn't even trouble himself to lie intelligently to us."

"Oh, what do you know!" Veronica laughed, waving him away. "You don't know Ragnar at all."

(Later it was revealed that Aaron had spoken with Senator Payne, and with two or three acquaintances in Washington, to see if Norst's visa couldn't be canceled-if Norst couldn't be, with a minimum of legal squabbling, simply deported back to Europe. But he must have had friends in high positions, or at any rate friends whose authority was greater than that of Aaron's contacts, for nothing came of the move; and when Ragnar Norst returned to Europe he did so solely at his own wish.) And so Veronica Bellefleur fell in love with the mysterious Ragnar Norst, though she was not conscious of "falling in love" but only of becoming more and more obsessed with him-with the thought, the aura, of him, which pursued her in the unlikeliest of places, and was liable to call forth a blush to her cheeks at the least appropriate of times. Even before her illness she was susceptible to odd lethargic reveries during which his image haunted her; she would give her head a shake, as if to cast herself free of his spell. A warm lulling erotic daze overcame her. She sighed often, and her words trailed off into silence, quite maddening Aaron, who knew, no matter how she denied it, that she was in love with the count. "But that man is an impostor," Aaron said angrily. "Just as I'm sure that stone of yours, if you allowed me to have it examined, would prove to be a fake-!"

"You don't know Ragnar in the slightest," Veronica said, shivering.

Yet she herself was often disturbed by him. He insisted they meet in the evening, in clandestine places (in the boathouse; beside Bloody Run; at the very rear of the walled garden, where there was a little grove of evergreens in which, by day, the children sometimes played) no matter how such situations compromised her; he insisted upon speaking "frankly" no matter how his words distressed her. Once he seized both her hands in his and murmured in a voice that shook with emotion, "Someday, my dearest Veronica, this masquerade will end-someday you will be mine-my most precious possession-and I will be yours-and you will know then the reality of-of-of the passion which nearly suffocates me-" And indeed his breath became so labored it was nearly a sob, and his eyes glowed with an unspeakable lust, and after a terrible moment during which he stared into her eyes almost angrily he turned aside, throwing himself back against a railing, his arm upraised as if to shield himself from the sight of her. His chest rose and fell so violently that Veronica wondered for a terrible moment if he were having a seizure of some kind.

For several minutes afterward Norst remained leaning against the railing, his heavy-lidded eyes closed, as if he were suddenly drained of all strength. And afterward, escorting her back to the manor house, he said very little, and walked feebly, like an aged man; in parting he did no more than murmur a gentle, melancholy goodbye, and failed even to lift his gaze to hers. "But Ragnar," Veronica asked, bold with desperation, "are you angry with me?-why have you turned away from me?" Still he did not look her in the face. He sighed, and said in a weary voice, "My dear, perhaps it would be for the best-for you, I am thinking only of you-if we never met again."

That night she dreamt of him once again, far more vividly: she saw him more vividly, it seemed, than she had seen him in the flesh. He seized both her hands and squeezed them so hard she cried out in pain and surprise, and then he pulled her to him, to his breast, and closed her in his strong arms. She would have fainted, she would have fallen, had he not held her so tight. . . . He kissed her full on the lips, and then buried his face in her neck, and then, while the swooning girl tried with feeble hands to prevent him, he tore open her bodice and began to kiss her breasts, all the while holding her still, and murmuring lulling commanding words of love. It excited him all the more, that she was wearing the bloodstone around her neck (for indeed Veronica was wearing it in bed, beneath her nightgown). You must stop, Ragnar, she whispered, her face crimson with shame, you must stop, you must stop- By day she only half-recalled her tempestuous dreams, though she was still under their spell. Strange emotions washed over her, and left her so drained of energy that her mother asked more than once if she were ill: she was by turns fearful, and disgusted, and wildly exhilarated, and ashamed, and defiant, and impatient (for when, when, would he see her again?-he'd left word with a servant that the embassy in Washington had called him), and delighted as a child (for she was certain he would see her again). Sometimes she ate ravenously, but most of the time she had no appetite at all-she simply sat at the dining room table, oblivious of the others, staring into space, sighing, her head aswim with languorous wraithlike images of her lover.

You must stop, Ragnar, a voice rose shrilly, you must, you must, you must stop before it's too late. . . .

AND THEN A tragic accident befell poor Aaron, and it was Ragnar Norst himself who comforted the stricken young woman.

Unwisely, against his father's reiterated wishes, Aaron went out hunting alone in the woods above Bloody Run, accompanied only by one of his dogs. While crossing a white-water stream he evidently lost his footing, fell, and was carried hundreds of yards downstream, over a seven-foot falls, to his death in a swirling shallow rapids in which rocks and logs lay in manic profusion. The poor young man's throat was slashed by a protruding branch, and it was estimated that he must have bled to death, mercifully, in a matter of minutes. By the time the search party discovered him (he had been missing then two days) his body, so large, once so intimidating, was bled white, trapped in a tight little cove of froth-covered rocks and logs.

(Neither the dog nor the shotgun was ever recovered, which added to the mystery of the death.) The stricken Veronica wept and wept, as much for the senselessness of Aaron's death as for the death itself: for to her there was no mystery, there was only the fact that she would never see Aaron again, never exchange words with him again. . . . No matter how they had quarreled they had loved each other very much.

How ugly that death was, and how pointless! If the headstrong young man had only listened to his father's words . . . No, Veronica could not bear it; she would not bear it. She wept for days on end and would allow no one to comfort her.

Until Ragnar Norst returned.

One morning he drove up the graveled lane in the stately black car (whose engine was overheated), and insisted that he be allowed to see Miss Veronica: for he had learned, in Washington, of Aaron's death, and he knew at once that Veronica must be comforted if she was to survive the crisis. She was so exquisite, so sensitive, the horror of a brute accidental death might undermine her health. . . .

The very sight of Norst enlivened her. But she took care, being a discreet young woman, to hide her feelings; and, indeed, a moment later, the memory of her brother's death swept over her once again, and she succumbed to a fresh attack of weeping. So Norst took her aside, and walked with her along the lake, at first saying nothing at all, and even urging her to cry; and then, when it seemed to him that she was somewhat stronger, he began to query her about death. About, that is, her fear of death.

Was it death itself that terrified her . . . or the accidental nature of that particular death? Was it death that so alarmed, or the fact that she would not (or so she assumed) ever see her brother again?

Above the choppy dark waters of Lake Noir they paused, to listen to waves lapping against the shore. It was nearly sundown. Veronica shuddered, for a faint chill breeze had arisen, and quite naturally, quite gracefully, Norst slipped his arm about her shoulders. He was breathing heavily. He gave off an air of excitement and exhilaration. But his voice was steady, steady and restrained, and Veronica gave no indication that she was aware of his emotion; indeed, she kept her gaze shyly averted. She wondered only if he was aware of the bloodstone she wore, hidden inside her shirtwaist. But of course he could hardly be aware of it . . . he could hardly know, under the circumstances. . . .

His arm tightened about her slender shoulders and he brought his mouth close to her ear. In a gentle, trembling voice he began to speak of death: death and love: death and love and lovers: and how, by the sacrament of death, lovers are united, and their profane love redeemed. Veronica's heart beat so powerfully she could barely concentrate on his words. She was aware of his nearness, his almost overwhelming nearness; she was terrified that he would kiss her, as he had in her dreams, and abuse her, ignoring her astonished cries. . . . "Veronica, my dearest," he said, cupping her chin in his hand, turning her face so that he might look into her eyes, "you must know that lovers who die together transcend the physical nature of the human condition . . . the tedious physical nature of the human condition. . . . You must know that a pure spiritual love redeems the grossness of the flesh. . . . So long as I am beside you, to guide you, to protect you, there is nothing to fear . . . nothing, nothing to fear . . . in this world or the next. I would never allow you to suffer, my dear girl, do you understand? . . . do you trust me?"

Her eyelids were suddenly heavy; she was nearly overcome by a sense of lassitude, vaguely erotic, that very much resembled the lassitude of her most secret dreams. Norst's voice was gentle, soothing, rhythmic as the waves of Lake Noir, beating against her, washing over her. . . . Ah, she could not have protested had he attempted to kiss her!

But he was speaking, still, of love. Of lovers who would "eagerly" die for each other. "I for you, my dear sweet girl, and you for me-if you love me-and by that we are redeemed. It is so simple, and yet so profound! Do you see? Do you understand? Your brother's death offended you because it was an animal's death-brute, senseless, accidental, unshared-and with your sensitivity you crave meaning, and beauty, and a spiritual transcendence. You crave redemption, as I do. For by death in one another's arms, my love, we are redeemed . . . and all else is unadorned unimagined folly, from which you are perfectly justified to turn aside in horror. Do you understand, my love? Ah, but you will!-you will. Only have faith in me, my dearest Veronica."

Faintly she murmured that she did not understand. And she felt so suddenly exhausted, she must lay her head against his shoulder.

"Life and death both, if unadorned by love," Norst continued, in a rapid, low, excited voice, "are ignominious . . . mere folly . . . mere accident. They are indistinguishable when not enhanced by passion. For ordinary people, as you must have seen by now, are little more than aphids . . . rats . . . brute unthinking animals . . . quite beneath our contempt, really . . . unless of course they frustrate us . . . in which case they must be taken into account . . . taken into account and dealt with . . . ugly as that might seem. Do you see, my dear? Yes? No? You must trust me, and all will become clear. You must have faith in me, Veronica, for you know, don't you, that I love you, and that I have sworn to have you . . . from a time long past . . . a time you cannot remember and I, I can but dimly recall. . . . As for ordinary people, my dear, you must give them no thought . . . you will one day learn to deal with them as I do, only out of necessity . . . I will guide you, I will protect you, if only you will have faith. . . . And you must not fear death, for the death of lovers, dying into love, being born again through love, has nothing of the crudity of ordinary death about it: do you understand?"

She understood. Yet of course she did not understand. But her head was so heavy, her eyelids burned with the need to close, if only he would embrace her, if only he would whisper to her the words she so fervently wished to hear. . . . He had declared his love for her; she had heard it; she had heard it; yet he had not, yet, declared his wish to marry her; he had said nothing about speaking to her father, or . . .

Suddenly he drew away from her. He was quite agitated, and rubbed both hands vigorously against his eyes. "My dear Veronica," he said, in a different voice, "I must get you back home. What can I be thinking of, keeping you out here in this cold wind-!"

She opened her eyes wide in disbelief.

"I must get you home, you poor girl," Norst murmured.

THAT NIGHT VERONICA felt feverish, and despite the drop in temperature she left her French doors open. And she experienced a dream that was by far the most alarming, and the most curiously exhilarating, of any dream she had yet experienced.

She was, and yet she was not, unconscious. She slept, but at the same time was quite aware of her bed, her surroundings, and the fact that she lay asleep, her long thick hair loose on her pillow, the bloodstone exposed on her breast. I am asleep, she thought clearly, as if her spirit floated above her body, how strange, how wonderful, I am lying there asleep and my lover is shortly to come to me, and no one will know. . . .

Almost at once Norst did appear. He must have climbed over the balcony railing, for a moment later he stood before the window, dressed as usual in his frock coat, his white shirt glaringly white in the darkness, his goatee and the savage little curls on either side of his forehead vividly defined. He was silent. He was expressionless. Somewhat taller than his daylight self-Veronica, paralyzed, unable even to make her eyelids flutter, estimated that he must be nearly seven feet tall-he stood for a long moment without moving, simply gazing upon her with an expression of-was it infinite longing, infinite sorrow?-was it yearning?-love?

Ragnar, she tried to whisper. My dear. My bridegroom.

She would have opened her arms to him, but she could not move; she lay paralyzed beneath the covers. Asleep and yet fully awake: conscious of her wild accelerated heartbeat and of his heartbeat as well. Ragnar, she whispered. I love you as I have never loved any other man. . . .

Then he was close beside her bed, without having seemed to move.

He was close beside her bed, stooping over her, and she tried to raise her arms to him-ah, how she wanted to slide her arms about his neck!-how she wanted to pull him to her! But she could not move, she could do no more than draw in her breath sharply as he stooped to kiss her. She saw his dark moist eyes drawing near, she saw his mouth, his parted lips, and felt his breath-his warm, ragged, rather meaty breath-she smelled his breath which was dank, and somewhat fetid-it put her dizzily in mind of the farm-the farm laborers hauling carcasses-hogs strung up by their hind legs-blood gushing from their slashed throats, into enormous tubs-She drew in his breath, which was sour with something dried and stale and old, very old, and in a swoon she began to laugh, every part of her was being tickled, tickled to delirium, to a delicious frantic delirium, and she did not mind his breath, she did not mind it at all, or his agitation, his impatience, his roughness, the grinding of his teeth against hers in a harsh kiss-she did not mind at all-not at all-she wanted to shout, and pound at him with her fists-she wanted to scream-to throw herself about the bed-to kick off the covers, which so exasperatingly pressed upon her-and she was so hot-slick with perspiration-she could smell her own body, her bodily heat-it was shameful, and yet delicious-it made her want to snort with laughter-it made her want to grab hold of her lover-seize him by the hair, by the hair, and pummel him, and press his head against her, his face against her breasts-like that-yes, exactly like that-she could not bear it, what he was doing to her-his lips, his tongue, his sudden hard teeth-she could not bear it-she would scream, she would go mad, snorting, shouting, tearing at him with her nails-My lover, my bridegroom, she would scream, my husband, my soul- AS THE DAYS and weeks passed, and Veronica sank ever more deeply into a state of languid, sweet melancholy, it was commonly believed that the shock of Aaron's death had plunged her into a "black mood" and that she would, in time, emerge from it. Yet Veronica rarely thought of her brother. Her imagination dwelt almost exclusively upon Ragnar Norst. Throughout the long, tiresome day she yearned for the night, when Norst came to her, unfailingly, and gathered her up passionately in his arms, and made her his bride. There was no need for him to speak of love any longer; what happened between them went beyond love. Indeed, the trivial notion of love-and marriage as well-now struck Veronica as uninteresting. That she had once hoped Ragnar Norst would ask her father for permission to marry her-! That she had once imagined him an ordinary man, and herself an ordinary woman-! Well, she had been a very innocent girl at the time.

Strange, wasn't it, people said, that the count had disappeared so suddenly. Evidently he had returned to Europe . . . ? And when would he return, had he said . . . ?

Veronica paid no attention. She knew that people whispered behind her back, wondering if she was unhappy; wondering if there was any sort of "understanding" between them. Would there be a marriage? Would there be a scandal? It did not trouble Veronica in the slightest, that her lover had left the country: for in her sleep he was magnificently present, and nothing else mattered.

During the day Veronica drifted about idly, thinking certain forbidden thoughts, recalling certain sharp, piercing, indefinable pleasures. She sang tuneless little songs under her breath, reminiscent of the songs Norst had sung. She tired easily, and liked to lie on a chaise longue wrapped in a shawl, gazing dreamily out toward the lake, watching the lakeshore drive. Sometimes Norst appeared to her though it wasn't night: she would blink, and see him standing there a few feet away, gazing at her with that shameless raw hunger, that embarrassing intensity she had not understood at the start. Graciously, languidly, she would lift her hand to him, and he would lean forward to raise it to his greedy lips . . . and then some clumsy heavy-footed fool of a servant would enter the room, and Norst would vanish.

"Oh, I hate you!" Veronica sometimes cried. "Why don't you all leave me alone!"

They began to worry about her. She was so listless, so pale, the color had gone out of her face and she looked positively waxen (though more beautiful than ever, Veronica thought, why don't you admit it-Ragnar's love has made me more beautiful than ever); she had no appetite for anything more than toast and fruit juice and an occasional pastry; she was absentminded, often didn't hear people speaking to her, seemed asleep with her eyes open, was obviously lost in grief for her poor dead brother. . . . Even when the doctor was examining her, listening to her heart with his silly instrument, she was daydreaming about her lover (who had appeared to her the night before, and who had promised to return the following night) and could not answer the questions put to her. She would have liked to explain: Her soul was swooning downward, gently downward, she was not at all unhappy, she was certainly not in mourning (in mourning for whom?-her boorish headstrong brother who had died such an ugly death?), everything was unfolding as it must, according to the destiny fate had determined for her. She would not resist, would not want to resist; nor did she want anyone else to interfere. Sometimes during the daylight hours she caught sight of a thin crescent moon, half-invisible in the pale sky, and the sight of it pierced her breast like her lover's kiss. She would lie down, suddenly dizzy, and let her head drop heavily back, and her eyes roll white in her skull. . . .

How sweet it was, this utterly unresisting melancholy: this sense of a downward spiral which was both the pathway her soul took, and her soul itself. The air grew heavy; it exerted pressure upon her; sometimes she found breathing difficult, and held her lungs still and empty for long moments at a time. She would have liked to explain to the nurse who now sat at the foot of her bed, or slept on a cot of her own just outside her door, that she was not at all unhappy. Others might be unhappy that she was leaving them but they were simply jealous, ignorant people who didn't understand her. They couldn't know how deeply she was loved, for instance; how Norst valued her; how he had promised to protect her.

There were times, however, when her dreams were confused and unpleasant, and Norst did not appear; or, if he did appear, his aspect was so greatly changed she could not recognize him. (Once he came in the shape of a gigantic yellow-eyed owl with ferocious ear tufts; another time he appeared in the shape of a monstrous stunted dwarf with a hump between his shoulder blades; still another time he was a tall, slender, eerily beautiful girl with Oriental eyes and a slow, sensuous smile-a smile Veronica could not bear to gaze upon, it was so knowing, so obscene.) On and on the dreams went, tumbling her about mercilessly, mocking her pleas for tenderness, for love, for her husband's embrace. When she woke from one of these dreams, often in the middle of the night, she would force herself to sit up, her head aching violently, and a flame of panic would touch her-for wasn't she seriously ill, wasn't she perhaps dying, couldn't something be done to stop the downward spiral of her soul? . . . Once, she heard her nurse groaning, thrashing about in the midst of her own nightmare.

And then two things happened: the nurse (an attractive woman in her mid-thirties who had been born in the village, and had trained in the Falls) grew gravely ill with a blood disorder, and Veronica herself, already weakened and anemic, caught a cold that passed into bronchitis and then into pneumonia in a matter of days. So she was hospitalized, and lapsed into a sort of stupor, during which busy dream-wraiths took care of her. They took excellent care of her: providing her with fresh, strong blood, and feeding her through tubes, so that she could not protest, and was thereby saved. In fact there was no question of dying, with so much skillful, professional activity on all sides; and in a week or two Veronica was not only fully conscious but even hungry. One of the Bellefleur maids shampooed her hair, which was still luxurious and beautiful; and she too was beautiful despite her pallor and the hollows around her eyes. One day she said, "I'm hungry," in a child's affronted voice, "I want to eat, I'm hungry, and I'm bored with lying here in bed. . . . I can't stand it a minute longer!"

So she was saved. Her lungs were well; the bouts of dizziness had vanished; her color was back. Upon admission to the hospital her doctors had discovered, high on her left breast, a curious fresh scratch or bite, that looked at the same time as if it were fairly old, which must have been made by one of the Bellefleur cats, hugged unwisely against Veronica's bosom. (For though the Bellefleurs had not nearly so many cats and kittens in those days, as they did in Germaine's time, there were at least six or ten of them in the household, and any one of them might have been responsible for Veronica's tiny wound.) Veronica herself knew nothing about it: she belonged to that generation of women who rarely, and then only reluctantly, gazed upon their naked bodies, and so it was a considerable surprise for her to learn that there was, on her breast, an odd little scratch or bite that had become mildly inflamed. Of course it was a very minor affair, her doctors assured her, and had nothing to do with her serious problems of anemia and pneumonia.

Indirectly she learned, to her astonishment and grief, that her nurse had died-the poor woman had died of acute anemia only a few days after having left Bellefleur Manor. Most extraordinary was the fact that, according to the woman's family, she had been in perfect health until she went into the employ of the Bellefleurs: she had never, they claimed, been anemic at all.

But Veronica had not died.

Now the disturbing, tumultuous dreams were over. A part of her life was over. She slept deeply and profoundly, safe in her hospital room, and when she woke in the morning she woke completely, well rested, elated, wanting at once to be on her feet. She was ecstatic with good health. In her luxurious cashmere robe she walked about the hospital wing, attended by her personal maid, and of course everyone fell in love with her: for she was radiant as an angel, and that long red-blond hair that fell loose on her shoulders-! She was merry and prankish as a child, she told silly little jokes, she even toyed, for a day or two, with the idea of becoming a nurse. How charming she would look, in her prim white uniform. . . . And then, perhaps, she would marry a doctor. And the two of them would be on the side of life.

Yes, that was it: she wanted to be on the side of life.

She was very happy, and begged to be discharged from the hospital, but her family was cautious (for, after all, Veronica's nurse had died-and she had seemed to be in good health), and her doctors wanted to keep her under observation for another several days. For there was something about her case that perplexed them.

"But I want to go home now," she said, pouting. "I'm bored with doing nothing, I hate being an invalid, having people look at me in that condescending pitying way. . . ."

And then one day, an odd thing happened. She was watching some teenaged boys playing football in a field adjacent to the hospital grounds, and though she wanted to admire them, and to applaud their physical dexterity and stamina, she found herself becoming increasingly depressed. They were so energetic, so vulgar . . . so filled with life. . . . Like aphids or rats. . . . There was no subtlety to them, no meaning; no beauty. She turned away in disgust.

She turned away, and began to weep uncontrollably. What had she lost! What had gone out of her life, when they had "saved" her here in the hospital! Her thin cheeks were growing rounded again and her dead-white skin was turning rosy but the mirror's image did not please her: she saw that it was uninteresting, banal, really quite vulgar. She was uninteresting now, and her lover, if he returned, if he ever happened to gaze upon her, would be sadly disappointed.

(But her lover: who was he? She could not clearly recall him. Ragnar Norst. But who was that, what did he mean to her? Where had he gone? The dreams had vanished, and Ragnar, Norst had vanished, and something so profound had gone out of her life that she halfway felt, despite her heartiness, her relentless normality, that it was her very soul that had been taken from her. The hospital had seen to that: it had "saved" her.) Still, she was grateful to be alive. And of course the family was delighted to have her back again. They thought, still, that she had succumbed to a severe black mood as a consequence of Aaron's death, and she could not tell them otherwise.

Yes, Veronica thought, a dozen times a day, I am grateful to be alive.

AND THEN ONE afternoon as she was being driven to the Falls for tea with an elderly aunt, she saw the Lancia Lambda approaching-saw it appear around a turn in the road, blackly regal, imperious, bearing down upon her with the authority of an image out of a dream. She immediately rapped on the glass partition and told the chauffeur to stop.

So Norst braked, and stopped his car, and came over to see her. He was wearing white. His hair and goatee and eyes were as black as ever, and his smile rather more hesitant than she recalled. Her lover? Her husband? This stranger? . . . He had heard, he said in a nervous murmur, of her illness. Evidently she had been hospitalized, and had been very ill. As soon as he returned from Sweden he had come up to see her, and had taken rooms at the Lake Avernus Inn. What a delight it was to see her, like this, so suddenly, with no warning-to see her looking so supremely healthy, and as beautiful as ever- He broke off, and took her hand, squeezing it hard. A flame seemed to pass over his vision. He trembled, his breathing grew rapid and shallow, she felt, keenly, the near-paroxysm of his desire for her, and in that instant she knew that she loved him, and had loved him all along. He managed to disguise his agitation by playfully pulling her glove down an inch or two, and kissing the back of her hand; but even this gesture became a passionate one. Exclaiming, Veronica snatched her hand away.

They stared at each other for several minutes, in silence. She saw that he was indeed the man who had come to her in her dreams-and that he fully recognized her as well. But what was there to say? He was staying at Lake Avernus, a mere twelve miles away; naturally they would see each other; they would, perhaps, resume their daylight courtship. It was harmless, and it gave them something to do during the long daylight hours. Norst was asking about her family, and about her health; and about her nights. Did she sleep well, now? Did she wake fully rested? And would she, just for tonight, wear the bloodstone to bed? . . . and leave the window of her room open? Just for tonight, he said.

She laughed, her face burning, and fully meant to say no; but somehow she did not say no.

She was gazing with a bemused smile at the teethmarks on the back of her hand, which were filling in slowly with blood.

The Proposal.

Snow was falling for the first time that winter, out of a leaden sky, when, not a week after the scandalous surprise of the wedding of great-grandmother Elvira and the nameless old man from the flood (an event so resolutely private that most of the family was excluded from it, and only Cornelia, Noel, Hiram, and Della were in attendance-the four of them unified in their outraged opposition to the wedding, though, in deference to their mother's happiness, as well as to the irrefragable nature of her decision, they were absolutely silent: witnessed the brief ten-minute ceremony with blank, slack, stupefied faces)-and on the very same day that Garth and Little Goldie brought their baby to the manor house, to show him off for the first time (Little Garth was so tiny everyone who saw him supposed he must be premature, but in fact he was not: he was perfectly proportioned and healthy and almost beautiful, and had been born precisely on schedule)-when Germaine, in hiding because she had overheard part of a quarrel between her mother and father, and was very frightened, happened, quite by accident, and quite to her distress (it was not simply because of the fact that, being an unusually honest child, she disliked spying on adults, but she disliked being trapped as well), to overhear yet another private conversation: and was not able to escape until the participants, after an extremely emotional session of at least ten minutes, finally left the room.

The child had run into one of the downstairs drawing rooms to hide, not from her parents (for neither Leah nor Gideon had had the slightest awareness of her presence-they had been that coldly furious) but from the idea of her parents, and their quietly raised voices, and the air all jagged knives and icicles and protruding nails, and that sour black gagging taste at the back of the mouth; without knowing what she did she ran into the room now called, since its renovation that fall, the Peacock Room (for Leah had had it papered in a sumptuous French silk wallpaper that showed, against an opalescent background, peacocks and egrets and other plumed, graceful birds in a style copied from a twelfth-century Chinese scroll), and threw herself down behind a love seat that faced the empty fireplace. There, she lay for some time, motionless, panting, prickling with unease. She did not know what her parents were quarreling about but she understood very well the light, deft, wounding, vicious nature of their banter, especially Leah's.

And then, suddenly, two people entered the room, engaged in an equally passionate conversation.

"But I cannot not say such things," a gentleman said at once.

Germaine did not recognize their voices. They were speaking in an undertone, and were clearly agitated. One of them-it must have been the woman-went to the fireplace to stand, and appeared to be leaning her forehead against the mantel, or against her arm which was stretched along the mantel; the other hesitated a respectful distance away.

"It's simply that I don't understand you," the gentleman said. "That you might ultimately refuse me-that you might even turn away in contempt-I can accept: but that you haven't the patience, or the kindness, or even the sense of-of humor-to hear me out-"

The woman laughed helplessly. "Ah, but you don't understand! You don't understand my circumstances!"

"I must beg your pardon, my dear, but I have made inquiries-discreet inquiries-"

"But no one would tell you, surely!"

"They have told me only that you're unhappy-that you're alone now in the world-a young woman of rare courage and character-but one who has suffered-"

"Suffered!" the woman laughed. "Is that what they say? Really?"

"They say that you've suffered a great deal, but choose never to speak of yourself."

"May I ask who this they is?"

There was the briefest hesitation. And then the gentleman said, in an imploring tone: "My dear, I really would rather not say."

"In that case please don't. I can't ask you to betray a confidence."

"You're not angry, I hope?"

"Why should I be angry?"

"At my making queries about you, behind your back."