with great reluctance.
  "But he only .smiled at me, and insipid, near apologetic smile. And shook his head. I 
watched his eyes fill with a soft, bleary despair.
  "I felt a profound, undeniable relief.
  " `But you will stay!' he insisted.
  " `No,' I answered.
  " `And neither will I!' said that young vampire from the darkness outside. And he stood 
for a second in the open window looking at us. Lestat looked up at him and then 
sheepishly away, and his lower lip seemed to thicken and tremble. `Close it, close it,' 
he said, waving his finger at the window. Then a sob burst from him and, covering his 
mouth with his hand, he put his head down and cried.
  "The young vampire was gone. I heard his steps moving fast on the walk, heard the heavy 
chink of the iron gate. And I was alone with Lestat, and he was crying. It seemed a long 
time before he stopped, and during all that time I merely watched him. I was thinking of 
all the things that had passed between us. I was remembering things which I supposed I 
had completely forgotten. And I was conscious then of that same overwhelming sadness 
which I'd felt when I saw the place in the Rue Royale where we had lived. Only, it didn't 
seem to me to be a sadness for Lestat, for that smart, gay vampire who used to live there 
then. It seemed a sadness for something else, something beyond Lestat that only included 
him and` was part of the great awful sadness of all the things I'd ever lost or loved or 
known. It seemed then I was in a different place, a different time. And this different 
place and time was very real, and it was a room where the insects had hummed as they were 
humming here and the air had been close and thick with death and with the spring perfume. 
And I was on the verge of knowing that place and knowing with it a terrible pain, a pain 
so terrible that my mind veered away from it, said, No, don't take me back to that 
place-and suddenly it was receding, and I was with Lestat here now. Astonished, I saw my 
own tear fall onto the face of the child. I saw it glisten on the child's cheek, and I 
saw the cheek become very plump with the child's smile. It must have been seeing the 
fight in the tears.
  I put my hand to my face and wiped at the tears that were in fact there and looked at 
them in amazement.
  " `But Louis . . .' Lestat was saying softly. `How can you be as you are, how can you 
stand it?' He was looking up at me, his mouth in that same grimace, his face wet with 
tears. `Tell me, Louis, help me to understand! How can you understand it all, how can you 
endure?' And I could see by the desperation in his eyes and the deeper tone which his 
voice had taken that he, too; was pushing himself towards something that for him was very 
painful, towards a place where he hadn't ventured in a long time. But then, even as I 
looked at him, his eyes appeared to become misty, confused. And he pulled the robe up 
tight, and shaking his head, he looked at the fire. A shudder passed through him and he 
moaned.
  " `I have to go now, Lestat,' I said to him. I felt weary, weary of him and weary of 
this sadness. And I longed again for the stillness outside, that perfect quiet to which 
I'd become so completely accustomed. But I realized, as I rose to my feet, that I was 
taking the little baby with me.
  "Lestat looked up at me now with his large, agonized eyes and his smooth, ageless face. 
`But you'll come back . . . you'll come to visit me . . . Louis?' he said.
  "I turned away from him, hearing him calling after me, and quietly left the house. When 
I reached the street, I looked back and I could see him hovering at the window as if he 
were afraid to go out. I realized he had not gone out for a long, long time, and it 
occurred to me then that perhaps he would never go out again.
  "I returned to the small house from which the vampire had taken the child, and left it 
there in its crib."
  "Not very long after that I told Armand I'd seen Lestat. Perhaps it was a month, I'm 
not certain. Time meant little to me then, as it means little to me now. But it meant a 
great deal to Armand. He was amazed that I hadn't mentioned this before.
  "We were walking that night uptown where the city gives way to the Audubon Park and the 
levee is a deserted, grassy slope that descends to a muddy beach heaped here and there 
with driftwood, going out to the lapping waves of the river. On the far bank were the 
very dim lights of industries and river-front companies, pinpoints of green or red that 
flickered in the distance like stars. And the moon showed the broad, strong current 
moving fast between the two shores; and even the summer heat was gone here, with the cool 
breeze coming off the water and gently lifting the moss that hung from the twisted oak 
where we sat. I was picking at the grass, and tasting it, though the taste was bitter and 
unnatural. The gesture seemed natural. I was feeling almost that I might never leave New 
Orleans. But then, what are such thoughts when you can live forever? Never leave New 
Orleans `again?' Again seemed a human word.
  " `But didn't you feel any desire for revenge?' Armand asked. He lay on the grass 
beside me, his weight on his elbow, his eyes fixed on me.
  " `Why?' I asked calmly. I was wishing, as I often wished, that he was not there, that 
I was alone. Alone with this powerful and cool river under the dim moon. `He's met with 
his own perfect revenge. He's dying, dying of rigidity, of fear. His mind cannot accept 
this time. Nothing as serene and graceful as that vampire death you once described to me 
in Paris. I think he is dying as clumsily and grotesquely as humans often die in this 
century . . . of old age.'
  " `But you . . . what did you feel?' he insisted softly. And I was struck by the 
personal quality of that question, and how long it had been since either of us had spoken 
to the other in that way. I had a strong sense of him then, the separate being that he 
was, the calm and collected creature with the straight auburn hair and the large, 
sometimes melancholy eyes, eyes that seemed often to be seeing nothing but their own 
thoughts. Tonight they were lit with a dull fire that was unusual.
  " `Nothing,' I answered.
  "`Nothing one way or the other?'
  "I answered no. I remembered palpably that sorrow. It was as if the sorrow hadn't left 
me suddenly, but had been near me all this time, hovering, saying, 'Come.' But I wouldn't 
tell this to Armand, wouldn't reveal this. And I had the strangest sensation of feeling 
his need for me to tell him this . . this, or something . . . a need strangely akin to 
the need for living blood.
  " `But did he tell you anything, anything that made you feel the old hatred . . .' he 
murmured. And it was at this point that I became keenly aware of how distressed he was.
  " `What is it, Armand? Why do you ask this?' I said.
  "But he lay back on the steep levee then, and for a long time he appeared to be looking 
at the stars. The stars brought back to me something far too specific, the ship that had 
carried Claudia and me to Europe, and those nights at sea when it seemed the stars came 
down to touch the waves.
  " `I thought perhaps he would tell you something about Paris . .' Armand said.
  " `What should he say about Paris? That he didn't want Claudia to die?' I asked. 
Claudia again; the name sounded strange. Claudia spreading out that game of solitaire on 
the table that shifted with the shifting of the sea, the lantern creaking on its hook, 
the black porthole full of the stars. She had her head bent, her fingers poised above her 
ear as if about to loosen strands of her hair. And I had the most disconcerting