Everything we do in life, we do with certain expectations.

And then it was, that grief and pain made themselves known to me as never before. Note this, because I knew the full absurdity of Fate and Fortune and Nature more truly than a human can bear to know it. And perhaps the description of this, brief as it is, may give consolation to another. The worst takes its time to come, and then to pass. The truth is, you cannot prepare anyone for this, nor convey an understanding of it through language. It must be known. And this I would wish on no one in the world.

We are not damned. We never were. Who under the sun has the right to damn any living breathing creature?

I never lie," I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love.

I never changed after that. I sought for nothing in the one great source of change which is humanity. And even in my love and absorption with the beauty of the world, I sought to learn nothing that could be given back to humanity. I drank of the beauty of the world as a vampire drinks. I was satisfied. I was filled to the brim. But I was dead. And I was changeless.

Then, are you master of us all? You didn't teach her that. Was she supposed to imbibe it from my quiet subservience?

My own funeral, I'd like to be laid out in a coffin in my own house. I would like my coffin to be put in the double parlor, and I would like all the flowers to be white.