“Then why am I so afraid for you?” she asked. Her voice was little more than a gasp. I think I had to see her lips move in order to hear her. “You sense my loneliness,” I answered, “my bitterness at being shut out of life. My bitterness that I’m evil, that I don’t deserve to be loved and yet I need love hungrily. My horror that I can never reveal myself to mortals. But these things don’t stop me, Mother. I’m too strong for them to stop me. As you said yourself once, I am very good at being what I am. These things merely now and then make me suffer, that’s all.” “I love you, my son,” she said.
