Natural talent is a questionable phenomenon. Inclination perhaps, but innate ability is extremely rare.

Esse quam videri," Celia says. "To be, rather than to seem.

I like that "once upon a time" quality, where the telling of a tale has an elevated sense of story. There's a whimsical quality to it. Sometimes in fairy tales more things seem possible, even though often they're real world based.

The silence that falls between them is a comfortable one. He longs to reach over and touch her, but he resists, fearful of destroying the delicate camaraderie they are building. He steals glances instead, watching the way the light falls over her skin. Several times he catches her regarding him in a similar manner, and the moments when she holds his eyes with hers are sublime.

It's too late. It was too late by the time I arrived in London to turn your notebook into a dove; there were too many people already involved. Anything either of us does has an effect on everyone here, on every patron who walks through those gates. Hundreds if not thousands of people. All flies in a spiderweb that was spun when I was six years old and now I can barely move for fear of losing someone else.

Each of them always gravitating toward the other. Yet still they do not touch.

I have never lied, “ Mr. Barris counters, standing as well. “I do not share what I am not at liberty to say. I gave my word and I intend to keep it but I have never lied to you. You never even asked me, you assumed I knew nothing.