Shortly after reaching the colony, I fell fatally in love with Louis, a young dark-haired bourgeois planter, graceful of speech and fastidious of manner, who seemed in his cynicism and self-destructiveness the very twin of Nicolas. He had Nicki’s grim intensity, his rebelliousness, his tortured capacity to believe and not to believe, and finally to despair. Yet Louis gained a hold over me far more powerful than Nicolas had ever had. Even in his crudest moments, Louis touched the tenderness in me, seducing me with his staggering dependence, his infatuation with my every gesture and every spoken
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