I worked at the locks for an hour, my glance darting this way and that to make sure she had not come up behind me again while I labored. The scent of her perfume lingered in the room still, although she herself was nowhere to be seen.

At length, I left off my tinkering and tested my new locks, and was pleased with the results. She'd never be able to fathom the combination now.

A sick feeling suddenly crept up in my stomach, tainting my satisfaction. My conscience pricked at me. Should I have taken her up above? I should have. I knew it. The moment I found her again in the tunnels, I should have returned her to the world and forgotten her, called it good riddance and let her be. But she had come with me back to my house so willingly, and my body and brain had not been thinking with clarity.

I did want her here, torment or not. It was better than being alone.

I took a long breath, then rose to my feet and crossed my house to Christine's bedroom. The door was not shut entirely; there was a crack of light. I knocked regardless; it was likely she had not meant to give me an invitation.

She opened the door, her eyes as spiteful now as they had been an hour ago. But I thought I detected something else…a tinge, perhaps, of sorrow. "What do you want?" she asked in a tone that was nearly utterly devoid of emotion.

"I…" I breathed in deeply again. "You're wearing a dressing-gown, Christine. I need you fully dressed. I'm taking you back. Up there. It's time."

Suddenly she looked as though she had been struck. Her eyes widened and her face took on a strange pallor. "You…" She swallowed. "I see." She turned quickly, but not before I happened to glimpse tears stinging at the corners of her eyes.

"Christine!" I said in an exasperated tone. "I don't understand! You left! You clearly wanted to be away, clearly wanted this to be over. Well, I'm giving that to you now, don't you see? I wish to give you everything you want."

"Not. Everything," she said in a voice so low I barely heard it. I put aside my fear of touch and grabbed her by the shoulder, whipping her around to face me. "Confound it, woman!" I roared. "You're not making any sense! Don't you see I intend to make you happy by returning you?"

"That would not make me happy," she said in what was almost a snarl. "Erik, I want – I need – oh, what's the use!" She wrenched my hand from her shoulder and I snatched it back as though it had been burned.

"I don't understand," I said, hating my voice for its change in tone. I was pleading now, like the child I had once been in my mother's house. I had never been able to fathom her moods either.

Christine let out a breath, swiping at her reddened face to brush away the tears. "No, I don't suppose you would," she said maddeningly, and I growled with anger.

"Women are such damnably confusing creatures," I suddenly snapped. "They'd carve your very heart out from your breast and then hold it aloft with the blood dripping down, and still claim they never meant to cause you any harm."

"Oh, to hell with you and your stupid ideas about women," she said angrily through her tears, and now I was the one who felt as if I'd been struck. Christine, using vulgar language? "Women are not so very complicated after all, Erik; men are the ones who never pay attention to anything and then blame women for their confusion. A manmight ignore a fire as it blazed merrily about him and then hours later look all around and wonder dumbly why his house had turned to ash!"

Oho, my little cat had very sharp claws today, didn't she? This sort of talk was very unlike her, indeed, and I felt a keenly honed razor's-edge of irritation scrape across my thoughts. I gritted my teeth.

"If there is something you should like me to understand," I said slowly and deliberately, "I should like you to have out with it at once. I'm done with your strange insinuations and veiled references and stammering this or that and your But, Eriks. Out with it! Why did you leave? Why are you unhappy, and why in God's name would it not improve your mood to be out of my house and back into the world to which you belong, if you wanted to be rid of this place—of me—so much as that?"

She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, I realized that we were standing far closer together than I might have liked, and my blood pounded in my ears.

"Erik," she said, and her voice was soft and strange, "I don't know where I belong. I don't belong up there. I had hoped that I belonged here, but…I can't bear it, Erik, I can't bear it when you don't touch me and when you tell me to get out of your room and you treat me as though I were a sort of fragile bird in a gilded cage! All this time, Erik, you've kept me here, and I've wondered why. You flood me with trinkets and clothing as if…well, almost as if to make up for the lack of your own presence, but you barely speak to me, and you almost never touch me, not even my hand or my face, and it's driving me mad!"

I didn't understand her. I didn't…I had thought touching her even innocently would make things worse. I had never dreamed that it was the other way round.

"But…" My throat was dry. "But I…Christine, I'm so…why on earth would you want me to touch you?"

"Oh, you really are dense, you awful man," she moaned, and a strange laugh skipped out of her lips, a laugh which sounded more like a sob. She drew her hand across her eyes once more and then she straightened and looked at me with a steely glare.

Help me to understand, Christine, I pleaded in my head, unwilling to speak the words aloud.

"You don't…you don't wish to go back?" I asked stupidly, hardly daring to hope that this was not some delirious dream. She shook her head. "Please don't take me back, Erik," she said softly. I felt limp as I leaned against her doorframe.

"And you…I'm afraid I don't quite…" I wanted to talk about the other matter, of her purportedly wanting me to touch her, but it seemed a loaded subject, one I was not entirely willing to broach at this particular moment. It was entirely innocent, of that I was sure…she had said my hand or my face; of course she meant ordinary touches, nothing untoward. Face was a little intimate, but…

"Dinner," I said hurriedly. "I must…I ought to prepare dinner. It's past five, you know. You'll be hungry…how long were you out there in the…never mind, I don't want to know. You need a glass of wine to bring back the color in your cheeks – real color, healthy color, not that dreadful blotching from tears." I paled suddenly. "I don't mean to say that you're ugly, of course – you're quite fetching even when you cry." Why was I still speaking?

Oh, heaven help me. She was smiling. Only a little – that strange half-smile she sometimes had, the one I could never fathom to save my life. Why was she smiling? "Yes, please," she said. "Wine would do nicely. I may have quite a few glasses. I've never been inebriated before. Is it delightful or is it rather dull? You'll have to give me a few minutes to dress properly, of course…"

I didn't know this Christine. I'd never seen her before. She was flippant, unshrinking. What made me feel a good deal worse was that I didn't quite know whether I liked the new or the old Christine better.

Dinner was a strangely quiet affair. We barely spoke, and Christine picked at her food. Her strange brazenness from earlier appeared to have dimmed a bit.

At her request, before dinner I had donned the mask which showed my mouth ("I don't want to eat alone," she'd said), but this evening I had as little appetite as she, perhaps less. I was increasingly self-conscious and wished heartily that I had not acquiesced to her wish; every so often I saw her gaze dart to my exposed mouth and her expression was unreadable.

"I'll take another glass of wine now," she said, having finished her first, and I hesitantly obliged. "You're not generally given to drinking more than one glass of spirits," I said. "Are you sure you're quite all right?"

"Better now," she said primly.

"Christine, I…if you wish, we can take more walks," I said as she sipped her wine. "When you spoke before, about…touching, it occurred to me that a gentleman should surely have offered you his arm when we go out, and if that pleases you, I shall from now on. You must understand that I…I am not used to people. To ordinary things."

"Yes, I know," she said calmly, "and yes, that would please me. If you offered me your arm when we go out."

I felt a very small sense of satisfaction, mixed with uncertainty. "Well…good. That's good," I said. "I do want you to be happy, Christine."

"Yes, I know," she said, and seemed to sip her wine a bit more forcefully than was needful. Before I knew it, she had done with that glass as well. "May I have another?" she asked me prettily, and I poured the wine wordlessly, not daring to deny her. She was being so…well, agreeable, in point of fact. Her pleasant and calm demeanor sharply contrasted with her outburst from earlier this evening, and I had no wish to spark another confusing debate.

She took a few sips and giggled into her glass. Oh, dear, I thought. "I think perhaps it's best that this be your last glass," I said, hoping she didn't think me overbearing. I was only looking out for her welfare, after all…it wouldn't do to have to nurse her out of a splitting head-ache tomorrow. She'd be embarrassed, and I'd be annoyed, and nothing good would come of it.

As I prepared to cork the bottle, her hand darted out and grasped my wrist. I sucked in a sharp breath. "You ought to have a bit more wine, I think," she said in a rather odd tone, and after a long moment, she slowly let go of me.

"I…I'd rather not," I said matter-of-factly, but she shook her head and laughed again, and her face was so flushed and beautiful that she made my body ache.

"Christine," I muttered pleadingly. "I don't…"

"Oh, come, Erik," she said imploringly in a voice so like and unlike her that my limbs seemed to turn to jelly. I could hardly muster enough strength to lift the bottle, but lift it I did, and shakily poured myself another stout glass.

Christine's eyes were so bright. They fairly shone as they looked at me, but there appeared to be a sliver of sadness in them too. "Erik," she said, "can we retire to the sitting-room? You can tell me stories about Brussels, and London – and America."

"I never did go to America," I said, "I only saw it in pictures."

"Well," she said, taking another long sip and nearly draining her glass, "London, then. And I'll tell you about my home-country, and teach you to speak like a natural-born Swede."

At any other time I might have enjoyed this light, airy talk, this strangely free air she seemed to have with me, but tonight my mind and heart were burdened with the lingering troubles of my earlier panic. I still hadn't entirely forgiven her for leaving, nor did I understand this utterly confounding change in her mood. I couldn't understand her at all, in point of fact, and it bothered me greatly.

"The sitting-room," she said insistently, and her words were a little shaky. She wasn't drunk, I thought – not quite – but she was certainly feeling the effects of the wine more than not.

I rose to my feet uncertainly. "Christine, perhaps we should – "

"Your arm," she said, and then added, with an oddly fetching little hiccup, "Please."

I sighed. "Mademoiselle," I said in a tone I hoped did not sound quite as sardonic as it felt, and proffered her my arm. These unusual niceties were all very well, but I was waiting for a hammer to fall, for everything to crumble. For her to tell me it had all been a lie this afternoon, that she did want to leave, that she wanted nothing more to do with me, please and thank you very much. My heart grew a little cold at the thought, and I swallowed hard.

She took my arm and paused for a moment, her eyes sliding up to meet mine, and the cold band around my heart turned from ice into flame. The pressure of her fingers at my elbow was strangely delightful – she was touching me, doing it willingly, no need for me to avoid her like the plague – and the soft, uncertain smile playing at her lips made my mind wander into uncharted territory. What if…what if this were actually possible? Real, tangible bliss, like ordinary people?

I had a sudden image of waking up to Christine in my bed, or in hers, and my heart shivered violently. It wasn't the eroticism of the image – although there was an element of that – it was the domesticity of it, the simplicity, the normalcy. Love. Beauty. Tenderness.

Could I manage such a delicate, fragile thing as living like everybody else? Like an ordinary man, instead of a rat in a trap?

More importantly – was it merely the fantasy itself that lent such charm, or did I even want such a thing to be a reality?

I was shaken by this entirely unexpected, treacherous thought – that perhaps nothing I imagined could ever be as good in waking life – and I hurriedly escorted Christine to the sitting-room. "I am…not feeling well," I said between heavy breaths. "I don't think I'm up to telling stories of Brussels or London tonight, and I hate to be such a churl, my dear, but I don't think I'd be a particularly good student of your native tongue either. Not tonight, at least. Another night…another afternoon…I'd be most glad of it. I would love to learn to converse with you in the language of your fathers. But I'm distracted tonight, and I don't want to play the selfish demon again, and I…I would be gratified if we could sit here in front of the fire for a little while and you could…perhaps…speak your thoughts. As plainly or as little as you wish."

Her hand slid away from my elbow, and I suddenly ached for more contact. How could I have ever thought it a terrible thing?

My sweet, troubled, confusing Christine…her brow furrowed and she sighed. We sat awkwardly at opposite ends of the little couch, the space between us giving some strange comfort, perhaps. The silence was tangible, and I haltingly cleared my throat.

"Erik," she said at last, "I hardly know what to say. I do want to apologize, however, for…leaving. Running away, if you'd call it that. I left, and I didn't tell you I was leaving, and I know that it caused you a very great deal of pain and worry. But I think what puzzles me the most – and do forgive me if this makes hardly a bit of sense, because it makes little sense even to me – is that I…well, that is…I only did it because I wanted you to find me."

I found this difficult to absorb. "You…wanted me to find you?" I stared at her. "What kind of silly game –"

"Oh, Erik, believe me, I know it wasn't right, and it certainly wasn't a game," she said hurriedly. Her face was still flushed, and her bosom heaved a little as she took in a deep, shaky breath. "I can't explain it, not in plain words. I don't know how else to…"

I slammed my fist down beside me, and Christine jumped a little, her face drawn. I curled my fingers into the tightly woven work of the fabric and glared at the woman who would no doubt baffle me until the day I died.

"You drove me to distraction looking for you," I said between my teeth. "I tore the house apart. I looked in places where I knew you wouldn't be because I was so frightened that I simply had to be sure."

Her eyes glistened, tears not quite yet spilling from their precarious position atop her lashes. "Oh, and I am so sorry for that – I am!" she said with an awful, almost pathetic earnestness. "I never thought…I didn't stop to think…"

I wanted to be angry, and I was, but I was tired as well – so very tired. Exhausted by the day's events, really. Instead of shouting, I leaned my head into my fist and closed my eyes. "Christine, I don't want to hear your apologies. I understand quite well by now that your little stunt this afternoon was apparently nothing more than a thoughtless prank, not calculated to frighten me but to goad me somehow, into…what?" I opened my eyes and glared at her. "Into what?"

She leaned back and helplessly stared at her hands.

"Christine, don't do that. I have a habit of becoming very annoyed when I ask a direct question of anyone and do not receive a response."

She shivered as she looked at me, and I again felt keenly conscious of my mouth and chin laid bare to her gaze. The child in me wanted to fling my hand up to block it all from view, but the monster rather wanted her to look. Let her be repulsed. She'd asked me to wear this particular mask in lieu of my normal attire, hadn't she?

"I find it rather laughable," I said coldly, "that you claim to wish to stay here and yet clearly find my company more than a tad distasteful. A bit of a paradox, no?"

"Oh, you can be so hateful," she spat in what was nearly a whisper, and I attempted to quell the rising alarm I felt at seeing the glistening trails on her cheeks – the tears had at last left their hiding-place and I hated the hold that sight had on me. Even I, who had very little social experience to draw from, knew that it was apparently supposed to be the responsibility of men to keep women from crying, or at least to comfort them when they did. Wasn't it?

Did she expect me to comfort her? Should I?

Balderdash, my mind suddenly protested. Let her cry. You'll look an abject buffoon if you cater to her every whim. She's probably only crying to make you feel like the villain, when you know perfectly well you ought to be the hero. You found her, after all. She was the one who ran, and you were the one who went after her and cured her of the sick notion that she needed to be away in order to—

And that was when it finally hit me like a shot.

"I only did it," she'd said, "because I wanted you to find me."

She had thought she needed to run in order to get my attention.

I had been ignoring her so profoundly, it seemed, had been treating her so aloofly, that she felt the only way to capture my attention was to leave the house entirely. To make me search, seek, and bring her back.

It seemed…a strange thing, as she'd said herself. Improbable. Utter madness. But the idea wouldn't leave me, and a growing sense of panicked dread and excitement sprang up in my belly all at once.

"Ah," I said aloud, and her eyes darted up from her hands to meet my gaze. I swallowed, trying to allow my voice to remain cool, collected. "I think…I believe I understand now." My voice grew weaker. "That is…to a degree."

"Ah, a miracle!" she said in a voice that held more than a touch of bitterness, sarcasm even. It stung me, the swipe of the cat's claws, and I recoiled a little. I had spoiled everything, it seemed, all of her good cheer from earlier in the evening, and I was already second-guessing myself; I suddenly wanted to snatch back my words like a treat from an ill-behaved child. If I were wrong in my assumptions…ah, but what further harm could I possibly do? No more than what had already been done, I was certain.

Then again, perhaps it would make everything worse; perhaps the thing to do was to forget, to let things slide back into the uneasy rhythm of our previous days before. Perhaps it would all blow over like a retreating summer storm.

But perhaps…and this was a far worse perhaps…if we didn't speak of this, if we didn't have it out now, it would always be a cold shadow between us, rubbing painfully against a raw wound that would refuse to heal, a wound that would fester and burn – and in a brief moment I knew, with a cold feeling deep in my gut, that this would very likely not be the last time she discovered the trick behind the locks on the front door. She was strangely stubborn, my girl – always had been, even in the old days before she knew my voice. She would not ask me outright to return her to the upper world, I knew that now…but it gave me little comfort, for if this were not resolved—whatever this thing that troubled her was—I feared suddenly that she might very well run away again for sheer spite.

"She might just do it anyway, at that," I mumbled, "even if not for—" and then realized to my chagrin that I had spoken that particular thought aloud.

Christine's head tilted ever so slightly as she coolly regarded me. "Do…what?" she asked, as a strange expression tugged just a little at her face.

I shook my head. "Nothing," I said, and then forced myself to make the necessary, awkward inquiry. "Christine, when you…when you absconded from this house, were you—were you trying to make me…notice you?" My chest hurt; it seemed such a wholly impertinent question. I half-expected to feel a slap rattle against my mask.

But no such thing occurred.

There was a sharp little intake of breath; she sat up straighter, as though a rod had been placed in her back. She stared at me and my insides felt uncomfortably warm.

"Notice me?" she asked softly, hesitating. "I—well, I—yes, I suppose I was."

I closed my eyes and in spite of myself, a small, rapid groan escaped my lips.

"I notice you every day," I heard myself saying, with a particular vaguely lewd emphasis on the word notice that I half-heartedly hoped she wouldn't catch. I wanted to make myself stop, but I couldn't, I couldn't stop; I was a runaway cart set loose down a steep hill, no way to halt my progress and certainly no way to reverse my descent. I opened my eyes. "Your presence, your very scent drives me mad, did you know that, Christine?" Stop, my good sense whispered frantically, but it was far too late. Her eyes were fixed on me, and I perceived that her mouth had come slightly open. "I can't bear it," I muttered. "You complain of me not touching you—oh, little fool, do you sincerely think I don't want to touch you? I do—god help me, I do, Christine!—and yet I don't, because the thought utterly paralyzes me! Even now, I don't know if your maddeningly vague explanations mean what I am coming to think they might mean! It's utterly inconceivable to me, Christine, and I—" I broke off speaking abruptly, pressing my fingers to my lips to prevent myself from speaking further.

She didn't speak. I saw her hand move, just a little, reaching in my direction—but then she pulled it back, and I felt a terrible little knife-twist of rejection in my gut as she did.