My bat some o, but did noto soots of  of ternoon and crept into bed, pulling tra covers ill srange visions. er and my faturbing to me as it sed and altered, sometimes myself, sometimes anot oms o ths of sleep.

    I as and my back. A tiredness t o do ion or lack of sleep  tment  nagged at me but only very distantly, and long minutes passed before I could rouse myself to look at my ciment repidation? nostalgia? excitement?—

    and it o a sense of expectation.

    t urning! My sister ing it. I couldn’t see  smell  my inner ear, attuned alo  ion, and it filled me h a dark and soporific joy.

    to put off Aurelius. My sister , I o meet  too cold and o take off my pajamas before dressing, I pulled a t and ser on over top. Bundled up like a c, I  doairs to tc a cold meal for me, but I ite and left toucen minutes I sat at tcable, longing to close my eyes and not daring to, in case I gave in to torpor t ing my oabletop.

    ites to spare, I opened tco the garden.

    No ligars. I stumbled in t soil underfoot and told me ect tion. I understood entirely. It was er was coming.

    I reacing point. tirred itself. It self clasped.

    ‘Are you all right?“

    I ion, but distantly.

    ‘Do you emperature?“

    t  they had no meaning.

    I’d o tell  tions, to tell  my sister  se no; I kne from t radiating from  te sound of ood between me and my words and made me dumb.

    Aurelius let go of my o remove a glove, and I felt rangely cool in t night, on my forehead. “You should be in bed,” he said.

    I pulled at Aurelius’s sleeve, a feeble tug, but enougatue on casters.

    I  aken t o Emmeline’s apartment, but t, too,  ture t presents itself to my mind is t it ss oe impossible. I must , but ty  and tself persists.

    My memory of  niged. racts of time s seem in my recollection to eningly large, tiny marionettes a great distance aed during tion: my sister.

    By a process of logic and reason, I tempted to place into a meaningful sequence images t my mind recorded only incompletely and in random fass in a dream.

    Aurelius and I entered Emmeline’s rooms. Our step . tepped, until o a room o tanding in to us  a beginning,  a resolution, t ed me ever since I came to t s o my  vied cion of my sister. At my side Aurelius ed for me to announce us to Emmeline. But I could not speak. to an unbearable ululation in my ime stretco one eternal second; I ruck dumb. I brougo my ears, desperate to ease ture, it was Aurelius w!”

    And urns. Since saken by surprise, to a distorted O, but t stop, only veers and lurco a surns in so Emmeline and is transfixed by the air.

    For a time I am boto a w  know wo clasp o repel  akes .

    h of sorrow.

    Inside my ill, a torment of brige sound. My sister— My sister—

    treats and I find myself alone in an agony of noise.

    I kno remember it. Aurelius releases Emmeline tenderly onto teps in tion as Judit ime it takes o go and find a second set—Maurice’s, probably— Aurelius darts too t last enters tares at Emmeline on teps in my direction.

    But at time I kno t is my sister embraces me, possesses me, relieves me of consciousness. At last.