Ilsa

by Madeleine L'Engle

No one is without a grain of insanity. On nights like this there’s something about to burst inside me, something sobbing and wailing like the doves on the summerhouse, and I have to walk it up and down as though it were a baby, to try and quiet it. I have to defy the moon; I have to walk directly under its glare and prove that I’m stronger and more powerful, because I’m still alive and it’s nothing but a poor, dead, burned-out thing, all passion spent.”

He’s lying up there on that hard brass bed, with the moonlight pouring in stripes across him through the blinds and falling into his mouth. Sometimes I wonder what would happen to him if he took a swallow of moonlight by mistake. It might do him a lot of good.”