The mind and heart oft warred, or so the poets wrote. Nicholas on this night found it true.

A will to go. A heart to stay. The need to escape LaCroix; the desire to remain for Janette. His only love bound by his only hate. Inseparable. And insurmountable.

He walked, embracing the dark as his cloak and shroud. A part of him, that darkness, for so many centuries now that he remembered little of warmth and light. Yet he yearned to know them again. Over rain-drenched streets of cobble and brick he moved in silence, his footsteps too faint for mortal ears, the light in the City of Lights too dim this stormy eve for mortal eyes to see him. Who looked sought in vain for a shadow, a wisp, a thing too well acquainted with the night.

Gaslights flickered at his passing. He walked on. No thought of flight just now. His feet paced out his fury as though he might outwalk Paris altogether; leave its lights and its miseries far behind him.

LaCroix's words haunted, taunted. You will stop this pathetic search for a cure... You are my creature, Nicholas, made in my image.

Then, his own voice echoed, weak and cowering, I am a monster.

He paused, while water dripped from rooftops, to stare down a merchant's lane, lonely and shuttered against the night. Because he lingered, the watchman spied him there, and curious, moved in his direction. Nicholas caught the mortal's wary gaze, a fleeting touch of mind and soul, then looked away and hurried on, slipping back into silence and shadow.

Perhaps there is no cure, he heard his pale voice tell the smoldering LaCroix, but that won't stop me from leaving you. Kill me if you wish. Either way, I will leave you.

To leave LaCroix, to forsake the master's guidance and protection... To leave Janette...

Regret bade him pause again. Though Nicholas might plead with her to come with him, Janette loved LaCroix more than any mortal daughter ever loved a father. Little hope of wrenching her away. So he must go alone. But he must go. At any cost.

A wind heavy with slanting rain and the dusky smoke of coal fires washed over him. Somewhere in another street, two mortal voices rose in anger. One bid the other a wrathful good-bye, and a door slammed, only to open again moments later. The voice, now penitent, called the banished one back, murmuring tearful apologies.

Nicholas closed his eyes and wished himself the one so easily forgiven.

LaCroix forgave nothing. And LaCroix's daughter... Well, no stranger to leaving in her own rite, his Janette, nor one to summon her lover back, even to say good-bye.

He lifted his head to gaze up into gray, confining clouds. Like some furtive, hopeful suitor, they caressed the lighted face of a clock tower as it chimed the near-dawn hour.

Time to go. Time to sleep. And when the night returned again, time to leave this place and make a new life. Without LaCroix, his torment. Without Janette, his heart.

He whispered the words as the breeze drew him skyward, past rain and wind and the clock tower's somber glowing face.

"Forgive me, mon coeur. Forgive me."

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I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
Whan far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street.

But not to call me back or say goodbye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

-- Robert Frost, "Acquainted With the Night."

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