"You mean love," said the vampire. "Why do you hesitate to say it?"
  "Because you spoke of detachment," said the boy.
   " Do you think that angels are detached?" asked the vampire.
  The boy thought for a moment. "Yes," he said.
  "But aren't angels capable of love?" asked the vampire. "Don't angels gaze upon the 
face of God with complete love?"
  The boy thought for a moment. "Love or adoration," he said.
  "What is the difference?" asked the vampire thoughtfully. "What is the difference?" It 
was clearly not a riddle for the boy. He was asking himself. "Angels feel love, and pride 
. . . the pride of The Fall . . . and hatred. The strong overpowering emotions of 
detached persons in whom emotion and will are one," he said finally. He stared at the 
table now, as though he were thinking this over, was not entirely satisfied with it. "I 
had for Babette . . . a strong feeling. It is not the strongest I've ever known for a 
human being." He looked up at the boy. "But it was very strong. Babette was to me in her 
own way an ideal human being. "
  He shifted in his chair, the cape moving softly about him, and turned his face to the 
windows. The boy bent forward and checked the tape. Then he took another cassette from 
his brief case and, begging the vampire's pardon, fitted it into place, "I'm afraid I did 
ask something too personal. I didn't mean . . . " he said anxiously to the vampire.
  "You asked nothing of the sort," said the vampire, looking at him suddenly. "It is a 
question right to the point. I feel love, and I felt some measure of love for Babette, 
though not the greatest love I've ever felt. It was foreshadowed in Babette.
  "To return to my story, Babette's charity ball was a success and her re-entry in social 
life assured by it. Her money generously underwrote any doubts in the minds of her 
suitors' families, and she married. On summer nights, I used to visit her, never letting 
her see me or know that I was there. I came to see that she was happy, and seeing her 
happy I felt a happiness as the result.
  "And to Babette I came now with Lestat. He would have killed the Frenieres long ago if 
I hadn't stopped him, and he thought now that was what I meant to do. `And what peace 
would that bring?' I asked. `You call me the idiot, and you've been the idiot all along. 
Do you think I don't know why you made me a vampire? You couldn't live by yourself, you 
couldn't manage even the simplest things. For years now, I've managed everything while 
you sat about making a pretense of superiority. There's nothing left for you to tell me 
about life. I have no need of you and no use for you. It's you who need me, and if you 
touch but one of the Freniere slaves, I'll get rid of you. It will be a battle between 
us, and I needn't point out to you I have more wit to fare better in my little finger 
than you in your entire frame. Do as I say.'
  "Well, this startled him, though it shouldn't have; and he protested he had much to 
tell me, of things and types of people I might kill who would cause sudden death and 
places in the world I must never go and so forth and so on, nonsense that I could hardly 
endure. But I had no time for him. The overseer's lights were lit at Freniere; he was 
trying to quell the excitement of the runaway slaves and his own. And the fire of Pointe 
du Lac could be seen still against the sky. Babette was dressed and attending to 
business, having sent carriages to Pointe du Lac and slaves to help fight the blaze. The 
frightened runaways were kept away from the others, and at that point no one regarded 
their stories as any more than slave foolishness. Babette knew something dreadful had 
happened and suspected murder, never the supernatural. She was in the study making a note 
of the fire in the plantation diary when I found her. It was almost morning. I had only a 
few minutes to convince her she must help. I spoke to her at first, refusing to let her 
turn around, and calmly she listened. I told her I must have a room for the night, to 
rest. 'I've never brought you harm. I ask you now for a key, and your promise that no one 
will try to enter that room until tonight. Then I'll tell you all' I was nearly desperate 
now. The sky was paling. Lestat was yards off in the orchard with the coffins. `But why 
have you come to me tonight?' she asked. `And why not to you?' I replied. `Did I not help 
you at the very moment when you most needed guidance, when you alone stood strong among 
those who are dependent and weak? Did I not twice offer you good counsel? And haven't I 
watched over your happiness ever since?' I could see the figure of Lestat at the window. 
He was in a panic. 'Give me the key to a room. Let no one come near it till nightfall. I 
swear to you I would never bring you harm.' `And if I don't . . . if I believe you come 
from the devil!' she -said now, and meant to turn her head. I reached for the candle and 
put it out. She saw me standing with my back to the graying windows. `If you don't, and 
if you believe me to be the devil, I shall
  die.' I said. `Give me the key. I could kill you now if I chose, do you see?' And now I 
moved close to her and showed myself to her more completely, so that she gasped and drew 
back, holding to the arm of her chair. `But I would not. I would die rather than kill 
you. I will die if you don't give me such a key as I ask.'
  "It was accomplished. What she thought, I don't know. But she gave me one of the 
ground-floor storage rooms where wine was aged, and I am sure she saw Lestat and me 
bringing the coffins. I not only locked the door but barricaded it.
  "Lestat was up the next evening when I awoke."
  "Then she kept her word."
  "Yes. Only she had gone a step further. She had not only respected our locked door; she 
had locked it again from without."
  "And the stories of the slaves . . . she'd heard them."
  "Yes, she had. Lestat was the first to discover we were locked in, however. He became 
furious. He had planned to get to New Orleans as fast as possible. He was now completely 
suspicious of me. `I only needed you as long as my father lived,' he said, desperately 
trying to find some opening somewhere. The place was a dungeon.
  " `Now I won't put up with anything from you, I warn you.' He didn't even wish to turn 
his back on me. I sat there straining to hear voices in the rooms above, wishing that he 
would shut up, not wishing to confide for a moment my feeling for Babette or my hopes.
  "I was also thinking something else. You ask me about feeling and detachment. One of 
its aspects, detachment with feeling, I should say, is that you can think of two things 
at the same time. You can think that you are not safe and may die, and you can think of 
something very abstract and remote. And this was definitely so with me. I was thinking at 
that moment, wordlessly and rather deeply, how sublime friendship between Lestat and me 
might have been; how few impediments to it there would have been, and how much to be 
shared. Perhaps it was the closeness of Babette which caused me to feel it, for how could 
I truly ever come to know Babette, except, of course, through the one final way; to take 
her life, to become one with her in an embrace of death when my soul would become one 
with my heart and nourished with it. But my soul wanted to- know Babette without my need 
to kill, without robbing her of every breath of life, every drop of blood. But Lestat, 
how we might have known each other, had he been a man of character, a man of even a 
little thought. The old man's words came back to me; Lestat a brilliant pupil, a lover of 
books that had been burned. I knew only the Lestat who sneered at my library, called it a 
pile of dust, ridiculed relentlessly my reading, my meditations.
  "I became aware now that the house over our heads was quieting. Now and then feet moved 
and the boards creaked and the light in the cracks of the boards gave a faint, uneven 
illumination. I could see Lestat feeling along the brick walls, his hard enduring vampire 
face a twisted mask of human frustration. I was confident we must part ways at once, that