Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent. He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth.

Scared money can’t win and a worried man can’t love.

I will do what I promised." He whispered. "No matter what. I will not send you into the darkness alone.

Dying ain't in people's plans, is it?

Finally he said that among men there was no such communion as among horses and the notion that men can be understood at all was probably an illusion.

But I didn't know what to say to him. What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul? Why would you say anything?

Lying under such a myriad of stars. The sea’s black horizon. He rose and walked out and stood barefoot in the sand and watched the pale surf appear all down the shore and roll and crash and darken again. When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.