The Passion by Donna Boyd Page B

"I'm tired of your sil y lessons. Why do I have to know these things?"
    "So you can converse intel igently with me, of course."
    "Why are you the one who decides what is intel igent conversation and what is not?"
    He chuckled. "The answer to that should be obvious."
     
    "I don't understand why you care so much about human poets and artists and musicians. They have nothing to do with you."
    "I don't care about them. But I insist that you do." He stopped then, and turned to her, gazing into her eyes earnestly. "Once, long ago, our kind roamed the hil s and burrowed in caves, and our poor mean lives consisted of nothing but hunting and sleeping, fighting and dying. And then we discovered this." He tapped his forehead. "No claws can threaten it, no teeth can devour it, no humans can hunt it down with metal sticks or confine it with iron chains. Our intel ect. It is our strongest weapon. Without it, we would have lived forever in the forest. Because of it, we went on to build the pyramids and the great canals, to invent the telegraph and the internal combustion engine and to look with our telescopes to the skies. We have thought great thoughts and sung great songs and created works of art that wil endure long after your kind has disappeared from the face of the earth. We have created civilization , and have dragged you poor humans, more or less unwil ingly and in utter ignorance, along with us.
    This is what makes the werewolf, chérie , not what is in the face or the bearing or the elegant clothes.
    What makes a werewolf is on the inside, and that is something you can never see. And it is precisely because you don't understand this that we wil forever look down upon your kind with such great pity."
     
    She regarded him with wide dark eyes. "You built the pyramids ?"
    He gave a sound that was half laughter, half grunt of exasperation, and he rol ed his eyes to the sky.
    " Mon Dieu ! My pearls are indeed cast before swine!"
    She pouted prettily for a moment, put out of countenance by the comparison. Then she said, "If that's the case, and if I shal never be as smart as a werewolf, I don't understand why I should waste my time on German musicians."
    For a moment longer he looked frustrated, and then he gave a resigned shake of his head and laughed softly. He tucked her hand once again into the crook of his arm. "There, you see? A case in point! Every time it begins to look as though there may be hope for your race, some impudent young girl declines to waste her time with Austrian composers. How shal you ever improve the lot of mankind if you do not learn to build upon what has gone before? Shal we do everything for you?"
    "Wel , I'm tired of it al and I have no ambition to improve on anything at al . I don't want any more lessons."
    "You have no choice."
    "I could leave."
    "Where would you go?"
     
    "Somewhere I don't have to talk about Greek philosophers or dead composers."
    He chucked her under the chin with a gloved finger, his eyes twinkling. "You won't leave, chérie . You're enchanted with me."
    Enchanted , she thought, and then she couldn't help smiling. Yes, that was what she was. Enchanted.
    Those were good times, those bright cold days of innocence and discovery, as Tessa blossomed beneath his tutelage and he took pleasure in exploring truth, nature and his own personal history through her wide and hungry eyes. But al too soon those lazy hours of ease and splendor came to an end, and winter was upon them.
    It began, as far as Tessa was concerned, with a heavy black-bordered envelope in the morning post, although when she looked back upon events she realized the disruption of the household had real y begun the evening before, when Alexander, missing dinner, had shut himself in his chambers and requested to be left undisturbed. Gault, Mme.
    Crol iere, Poinceau—al of them, she now realized, had been conspicuously absent since at least that time, and the house seemed to have been engulfed in a funereal pal long before the