“With deference, my woman, it requests neither an abundance of involvement nor any incredible specialty of motivation to find that changes are in the offing. For the world… and the Family. To uphold a tenet of death before disrespect is hardly insightful, particularly when one thinks about that thusly one relinquishes all further chances for good achievement.” “You don’t yet hear the tune of your blood,” said Lady Dolores. “That much is evident.” “Gracious, yet I do!” Beheim returned, however dubious whether she was alluding to something real or just waxing figurative. “Furthermore, your contentions have gone far in enrolling my pride, my feeling of honor. In any case, pride and honor, as well, should face the real factors, or probably they become simple vanities. As you surely understand, certain meds have been fostered that permit us to renounce the dim rest and other of the beautiful preventions long orderly upon our condition, and along these lines, we may spend the sunshine hours in whatever occupation we favor… since we keep from the light. Furthermore, the time gravitates toward when our men of science, maybe one who even now works in my ruler’s administration”— he gestured to Agenor—”will devise a method by which we may walk abroad in the day. This is a certainty. What’s more, with that change, should not every little thing about us change? I suspect as much. We will be compelled to rethink our job in the issues of the world. I speculate we will sometimes rethink too our position toward mortal men and get together with them in extraordinary ventures. Maybe never wholeheartedly, maybe never straightforwardly as respects who and what we are. In any case, at any rate somewhat.” “strolling about in the sunlight doesn’t tempt me,” said Lady Dolores. “Concerning getting together with humans in any endeavor other than taking care of, I can discover no words to communicate my abhorrence. Next, you will recommend that we look for counsel from the cows in the fields. That is no less accursed a possibility.” “We were all human once, woman.” “Expressed like Agenor’s man.” “I’m my own man,” Beheim said forcefully. “Should you require confirmation of this, I will be enchanted to supply it.” First annoyance, at that point bemusement, washed across Lady Dolores’ face. “Rudeness can be an engaging quality,” she said. “However, be careful. It won’t generally discover so mercifully a reception.”Her eyes, marginally enlarged and fixed upon Beheim, went a shade hazier, a degree more radiant, appearing to be both to hazard and to offer a sexual guarantee. A rush passed across the muscles of Beheim’s shoulders, and maybe he had become out of nowhere little and weak, reduced by the focal point of a huge disliking greater part; yet he perceived this to be simply a result of Lady Dolores’ gaze. He could feel in it all the heaviness of her years—200 and ninety, so it was said—and the chill capability of her gathered force. He was vulnerable before her, similar to a bird entranced by a snake. Panicked by destiny, yet simultaneously allured by it. Her face and structure appeared to be twisted, as it may in a watery reflection, and the assembly hall itself likewise looked misshaped, spaces of obscurity extended, light blazes brought into a flashing, red hot knives, the whole point of view become that of a fever dream, shadowy roads driving away between gatherings of prolonged, rich ghosts who seemed to have gotten out of a bad dream by El Greco. And afterward, as quickly as he had been overpowered by this inclination, he was liberated from it, so totally free that he felt briefly dispossessed, unsupported, similar to a kid who wakes in the night to find that he has started off the covers that have been overheating him and causing awful dreams. “What your situation neglects to consider,” Lady Dolores said, proceeding as though nothing had occurred, “is the vulgar engraving of our tendencies, our need to have and overwhelm.” Beheim, actually confused, experienced issues in marshaling his contemplations, however, the urge of Lady Dolores’ haughty articulation enlivened him to recuperate. “I don’t limit anything,” he said. “Nor will I deny my temperament. I’m of the Family now and would not wish this to change. In any case, I decided to decipher our fundamental condition from an alternate perspective than do you. Though you demand we have been given a permit to apply our will howsoever we want, a permit allowed by some unknown malicious pantheon, I present that we are tormented with an infection whose most critical manifestations are a hankering for human blood and an all-inclusive life expectancy. We as of now have some proof that this is the situation. I’m talking, obviously, of the substance found by the Valeas that is produced sometimes in human blood and gives off an impression of being a factor in allowing a lucky not many to endure a killing chomp thus get together with the Family.”