A/N: This story is a fanfiction of a fanfiction … of a fanfiction. An AU story based on my own "Miri Kom" which is mostly inspired by Susan Kay's "Phantom", and Leroux's "The Phantom of the Opera". While Leroux's novel is out of copyright, I assume that Kay's novel is not. I intend to make no profit off of this story.

For all those who were upset that Arabella had to die in "Miri Kom"...

This is a "What If" situation of what would happen IF Arabella had not died from her self-inflicted wound in "Miri Kom". Those who believe life might have been a bit better for Erik if Arabella had survived are about to find out just how wrong they are. Just how wrong Arabella was questioning that exact scenario in its' sequel story "From the Ashes". Prepare for darkness, some perversion … and probably a whole lot of hating Erik … maybe even Arabella.

Fanfiction author E.M.K.81 is my co-author of this story, and I highly recommend you go see her works. I particularly recommend "If Love Were a Flower". I don't think I've ever read a fanfiction so long!

Once again, please excuse any editing mistakes such as typos or unintelligible gaps. I am legally blind and reading over my work even once, never mind repeatedly, swiftly gives me headaches. But I'll do my best. Please don't expect another chapter for a while. This is a) testing the waters for an audience and b) a tease while I build up back chapters!

Synopsis: Two souls made for one another, but thrust into untold horrors, don't always come out good on the other side. But … with enough love and understanding and growth … maybe they can wash away the filth and horror and trauma … and be reborn with just slightly Shadowed Hearts...

Chapter One

Ma Non Troppo

Arabella sighed, brushing her fingers through her dark hair in an attempt to get all the knots out. It was dim in the tsera, and she was surrounded by the soft light pattering of raindrops. It had been a long, wet, utterly boring day for her. In the month that had passed since the nearly fatal infection had finally reversed itself and allowed her – quite literal - miraculous recovery, she'd been permitted to do very little. Her husband was terrified for her well-being, insisting she not return to work or any kind of strain whatsoever until she was completely healed from the stab wound that had almost killed her.

It had taken her baby already. Taken the baby growing inside of her that would have given them a family. And yet her body still had not healed. She'd gotten worse; the infection continuing and worsening until it was in her blood. Erik had worked tirelessly with the help of Bella's grandmother, Tsifia, to try and save her. Nothing had seemed to help. The fever had worsened until she was delirious. Her body had weakened and begun ridding itself of all toxins possible through the most foul of ways. For days Bella had only been able to lie helplessly on the ground while her husband and grandmother tended to her rebellious body.

He had sworn up and down that she had actually died right in his arms in the middle of the night. Her poor husband... he'd been exhausted and had begun to lose hope. In spite of the doctors' visit Erik had managed to attain, and the very strong medications Erik had impoverished them to purchase, he said that she had only gotten worse. Her body had suffered something much like convulsions, and then she had seemed to weaken unto the point of death. He insisted again and again that he'd been able to tell she was not breathing for nearly a full minute. He had not been able to find a pulse.

This could not be true, of course. He'd been so worried about her, so exhausted from caring for her for so long. It had been his morbid imagination. A fearful fantasy. Otherwise, how could she be alive now and trying to take care of their little tsera while he performed and humiliated himself for the masses?

She made her way over to the flap of their tent and pushed it aside. She could see Erik on his stage – which he'd erected only a few yards away so as to be close by if she needed anything. Ever since her recovery had allowed it, he'd been performing nine or more times a day. He would go from magician to musician and back again, sometimes singing or playing the violin or even the little wooden flute she'd given him. And sometimes, when he thought the crowd started to look bored, he would fling his mask off and give everyone the most humiliating experience he could contrive of. He would force them to witness his terribly deformed, corpse-like visage. Then he would punish them for the sight by tearing through their ears and into their souls with a song so beautiful and sorrowful that people left in waterfalls of tears.

It was what brought in the most money. Given her limited mobility, Erik did not dare pick too many pockets. If he was clumsy just one single time – or noticed by the wrong sharp eye – then he would never be able to escape the law. It would bring in so much more money to share with the tribe … but he simply did not dare being arrested when his wife was still so weak and helpless. Unable to provide for herself.

This was no longer entirely true. Bella had been able to walk and move for many days now. But Erik insisted it was much too soon for her to return to work. Even if she were to simply help her grandmother in her own tent, Erik feared Bella would suffer a relapse in the infection her body had valiantly defeated with the help of both medicine and gypsy remedies. Every time she left the tent, he would inexorably herd her back inside and sit down with her to keep her from wandering off.

It was very sweet, how well he tended to her. But it was also utterly infuriating. She knew what her body was capable of, and she knew herself to be quite recovered from the injury and infection that had nearly taken her life. Why could Erik not trust her to return to work slowly and know her own limits? The entire tribe supported them now. There was no one who would let her risk harm by overworking. And it was just so boring in the tent all day while Erik worked! It didn't matter how he taught her to properly read and write in the evenings. Did not matter how he at least tried to teach her the basics of playing a violin. These things were not enough to take up her entire day without causing a massive headache. She was not used to straining her eyes so much in the tsera;and Erik refused to hear of her being out of the tent for longer than it took to relieve herself in a nearby stand of shrubbery. He wouldn't even let her walk all the way to the woods as others did! No. She had to go in that thick copse of shrubs, no matter whether or not they had to live with the growing smell!

Bella noticed her grandmother passing by Erik's performance; carrying what looked to be a rather cumbersome chair under one arm and an even clumsier bag over the shoulder of the other. Bella lurched forward at once, ignoring the fact that Erik would instantly see her out in the open. She tried very hard to be a good obedient wife … but this well-meant imprisonment simply had to end sometime!

"Let me help you, Bunica." she offered as she approached Tsifia. The older woman had aged dramatically in the past months. She looked eighty or older due to all the strain the family had been through this past year. The poor woman had truly lost her daughter, witnessed the attempted suicide of her granddaughter, and then almost seen the same granddaughter slip away due to an infection she desperately wished to survive. That would be enough strain to break a lesser person, but Tsifia had come out almost whole on the other end.

Arabella took the uneven bag, wincing at the slight ache in her abdomen. She didn't understand why it hadn't hurt much more before the infection had set in. Even Tsifia hadn't been able to tell her why the injury was so much more painful now compared to before the wound had properly healed.

"Erik isn't going to like that." Tsifia warned with a glint of dark humor in her eyes. She glanced at the currently masked magician up on the platform by Bella's tent. Erik was currently working with fire and making the crowd gasp and shriek with awed fear as he seemed to conjure and juggle it from all directions. "But it's been a long day. I suppose carrying some jars a few yards won't kill you now."

"I should be dancing up on that stage." Bella muttered bitterly. "But Erik says not for another month. That's if he thinks that I am ready by then. I'm sure he'll come up with some excuse."

"Well you are the girl who decided to marry a gaje." Tsifia pointed out. "The men do all the work that I can tell. Although I've seen plenty of women doing their fair share, too. Erik must come from a middle class or even upper class belief that his wife should stay home and keep house."

"He chose to marry a Romany. woman" Arabella countered. "If he doesn't want his wife to work, perhaps he should have found a woman from his own caste."

Tsifia did not respond to this. It was a harsh thing for Bella to say in spite of her frustration. She knew that if Erik had stood a real chance of finding a woman from his own lifestyle, Bella would never have met him. No doubt she would still be living under her fathers' canvas roof, awaiting the birth of his bastard grandchild/child. She would be getting beaten every single day to one extreme or another. Maybe Adnah even would still be alive, either disgusted by her predicament and thus scared off of her … or willing enough to give the child a name so that she was waiting to be forced to marry him. Adnah could have afforded a bride price, after all. He just had not been in any rush to marry. Not when there had been so many gullible gaje women to keep his lusts satisfied while he tried and failed to win Arabella over.

Without Erik … she would be an entirely different kind of dead.

Bella helped her grandmother carry the bag and chair into her tsera and began pulling out jars of herbs and medicines to organize on a small collapsible shelf. Tsifia liked to keep things organized, even when they weren't in use.

"Tomorrow I will tell Erik that I am helping you with customers." Bella decided.

"Tomorrow you will ask him permission." Tsifia snorted. "He is your husband, Bella. You should at least respect his wishes."

"And he should respect mine." Bella nearly hissed. "I love that he worries so much, but I can't take it anymore! I will go crazy if I have to spend one more day alone in that tent!"

Sighing, Tsifia shook her head.

"You married him." she repeated. "You are still children yet. You will find your balance together. Just give it time. He will calm down. I'm sure of it. Young boys are always so earnest!"

She hesitated in the process of going back outside to light her usual evening fire.

"Good young boys at least. And I think Erik is trying his best to be a good boy."

Bella sighed, looking through her grandmothers' many tea leaves to pick which one she might want. Tsifia rarely ever complained about her selection before.

"Bella!"

She winced at the sound of Erik's voice in the doorway of Tsifia's tent. He sounded relieved, as if he hadn't been perfectly aware of her presence from the moment she left their own tent. She turned to raise her eyebrows at him curiously; as if she weren't directly acting against his urgent desires for her to stay put and safe.

"Yes, Erik?" she asked innocently. "Are you done for the day? You should take those robes off and come have some tea with me and Bunica."

"Can't your grandmother come and have tea with us?" Erik asked almost sulkily. He rarely ever began taking her arm and pulling her home. He never outright ordered her to do anything. But she knew when he asked her to stay put and rest, it wasn't simply a gentle request. He was a husband commanding his wife to do as she was told.

"I'm sure she could." Bella stubbornly folded her arms across her chest. "But I am tired of staring at those same walls day in and day out."

"You think I don't get bored of that?" Erik demanded a little irritably.

"You haven't been stuck within them for twenty-four hours a day for four weeks!" Bella's own irritation rose to met his, even though they were not fully arguing yet. She attempted a laugh to keep this from turning into a long put-off fight. "Please, Erik. I'm hardly doing anything difficult. Looking at tea leaves, sitting out in the fresh air. It's not going to do me any harm."

Erik fidgeted, half in shadow and half in the gloom of the rainy afternoon.

"What about supper?" he asked. "Do you want to have supper here, too?"

"Why can't we have our supper out there like everyone else?" She motioned in the vague direction of the clumped fires where many of the other Romany tribe members cooked their meals and sat together as if at a wedding banquet. It was not as though separate families never sat apart. But cooking larger quantities of meat together that everyone had paid for was much easier than fending for oneself. Erik knew how the community functioned. He'd been watching it for months. He'd been taking part in the community; trying to help out with his own earnings whenever he felt he could. Only a few other families were willing to accept that help … but at least he made the effort. Given his past with the tribe, Erik could have let them all starve while he took in all the money he earned completely for himself and his wife. Bella knew he didn't particularly like doing it … but he did it all for her. To make her happy by participating in the life she had grown up trying so hard to be a part of herself.

It was only quite recently that she'd learned ostracism had not been entirely the fault of the tribe itself; but that of her father. Yaakov Lyberia had done everything in his power to keep Arabella under his thumb and away from the other Romany people his wife belonged to. The man had stood outside of the community to the best of his ability while never outright being separate from them. He'd been begrudgingly accepted by the Romany due to his wife, and his in-laws taking him in against their better judgment. No matter how they had felt about Yaakov, they had been unwilling to give up Noleta and the soon-to-be Arabella.

Now Erik was the outsider. Unlike Yaakov, however, he did not make an effort to remain completely separate. He tried to share his earnings with them because the community meant so much to Bella and Tsifia. He highly respected Arabella's grandmother and was willing to do a great deal to repay her kindnesses and how she'd gone out of her way to make things easier for him.

Everything had been done for love of Bella; by her husband, her grandmother, and the chief of their people. If she had understood this at an earlier time … she never would have lost her baby. Never would have come close to dying. And who was she to resent their love when she finally felt accepted, appreciated, and cherished?

But … that did not mean she should have to live in her tsera for the rest of her life!

"Bella..." Erik groaned, rubbing at his non-existent nose through the mask he still wore. She wondered how such silliness offered him any relief at all. "You know why. Do we really want to ruin the appetites of every single Romany in the county? I can't eat without my mask!"

"Then let bunica and I ..." But her voice trailed off when Erik flinched slightly. She had not even completed her sentence and she had managed to wound her husbands' fragile emotions. She had suggested dining away from him... leaving him to his own devices. That was nearly a sin in Bella's eyes, because he so rarely ever wanted to be more than arms' length from her nowadays. Willingly being that far away from him just to eat when he'd been humiliating himself all day and earning both their keep just … didn't seem justifiable. Arabella sighed heavily. "Never mind, miri kom. Yes. We'll eat here with bunica, if you agree to it. Then, if you want to go directly back to our tsera, I will not argue with you. You can even tuck me right into bed if you want, instead of us having another lesson."

Erik looked torn between relief and uncertainty. She could clearly tell that he actually wanted to give her more freedom. That he would like to see her happy and doing all she wished to do. But his concern for her well-fare still scarred all his thoughts and emotions. He apparently needed more time, still, before he could give into her obvious need for fresh air and open skies.

"I will check on the pig." he murmured, turning and disappearing back towards their own tent. Erik had been away the previous night acquiring a pig from a nearby farm. Through nefarious means or through honest ones Bella did not know or care. But he'd come back with a suckling pig that looked as if it had died healthy enough, and it had been roasting all day. Bella had been permitted to check on it so long as she didn't strain herself, and Erik himself had been turning it between performances. No doubt he would share a great deal of the meat with any neighbors who would deign to take his offer of such sustenance.

But not before Arabella ate enough to satisfy his concern about her.

It was a nice evening. In spite of the rain that left them all mildly damp, the weather was warm and the world was reasonably quiet. A few people sat around the campfires playing instruments. Others danced to that music; and occasional raucous laughter broke into the serenity of the night. But mostly it was filed with low, murmured conversations and the crackling of well over a dozen small fires and three great big ones. Bella liked watching fathers' joke with their children, and lovers leaning shoulder-to-shoulder against one another as they wound down from another hard day.

Erik noticed that she was watching the world around them, and interrupted the trivial conversation he was keeping with Tsifia to wrap an arm about her shoulders and tug her close. Not as close as other lovers' around them. Not so close that she would feel confined. Even lying together on their specialized cot that Erik had built himself, Erik never held her too tight. Never completely wrapped her in an embrace. He never tried to pull her against him, or kiss her. The most he ever did was accidentally tangle his fingers in her hair while caressing it gently.

She was not stupid enough to push for more. Not so much because she didn't feel ready for at least a little more between them; but because Erik was far too paranoid about her well being to believe he'd ever let her try to do more. Yes, he had promised that when she got better that they could have a wedding night if she still wanted one when the time came. But that had been before an infection had nearly killed her. Before he'd become so concerned that she would be lucky if her own husband kissed her mouth for the first time within the next year.

And she wasn't quite ready for much more, anyways. She understood that about herself. Now that she was getting better and had thought multiple times Erik was looking at her in an all-too familiar way that normally frightened her when any other man did it. In spite of the thrill Erik's gaze gave her … it chilled her, too. Just enough so that she knew she wouldn't try for anything more than they already shared until they were both feeling better about such adventures.

Whenever that might be.

"Should we go back now?" Erik murmured against her temple, resting his lips against her forehead through her hair without quite kissing the spot. Somehow the ways Erik's mouth or hands would touch her felt like so much more – and yet less – than kisses and caresses. His lips lingered too long to be considered kisses. His hands stayed carefully still too long to be considered caresses. "We've been out here for three hours. It's going to be chilly in another half hour."

He was right. She glanced up at the darkening sky, seeing that twilight had fallen behind the scrim of rain clouds. The darkness would bring the cold. He was already giving into a great deal of stress allowing her to sit out in the damp air for so long.

"Yes." she agreed, leaning forward and letting him give her a supportive not-quite push to her back as she straightened up. Then he stood and placed the very tips of his fingers against the very small of her back. Guiding her without truly touching her. Tsifia bid them goodnight, and Bella kissed her grandmothers' cheek before turning to lean into Erik as if exhausted.

She wasn't. She just wanted to be close to him.

"Have you worked at any of your exercises today?" Erik asked her, referring to the reading and writing he assigned like a school teacher every morning. Today he'd told her to transcribe a book he'd recently acquired, and said he wanted to know what it said before they went to bed. Bella had been able to copy the letters well enough, but Erik had apparently forgotten the words were in French rather than Spanish. She was still barely learning French, so she didn't understand more than a word or two.

"Yes." she sighed. "What is it?"

"You can't tell me?" he chuckled.

"No." Bella scowled. "How could I? It's in French, Erik."

He gave a low French utterance that could only have been some expletive or other. Bella burst into an immediately stifled giggle.

"It's a scandalous story." he explained. "Written last century, I believe. It tells about some terrible games a few high-born aristocrats play with the bodies and hearts of the people around them. It's a tragedy, and the real antagonist gets her terribly inadequate comeuppance in the end."

Bella lifted her eyebrows.

"Will you read it to me? Translate it, I mean?"

Erik shrugged indifferently.

"If you like, certainly."

They changed separately, just as Arabella had once imagined and dreaded when he first brought up the very fantasy of them being together in their future. It had not been a real proposal; but he'd mentioned wanting to be with her. Arabella had thought about what that would be like. How with her terrible past Erik would feel so resentful of having a wife who asked him to leave every time she got changed, or who had to turn away whenever he was even remotely undressed. Although it wasn't quite that serious a case of modesty … being so ill that Erik had needed to help clean her body for days on end had not made her feel any more secure in being even half undressed – or caressed in such a state – by her own husband.

At least they didn't have to actually leave the tsera to get such privacy. Erik had hung a heavy tapestry near one corner of the tent, and placed a small oil lamp on a stool back there so no one had to change in the dark. The tapestry was thick enough so that no one on the other side could be taunted even by a silhouette.

Erik had not been able to argue with Arabella when he saw she had left the tent to help her grandmother with a few minor tasks. Certainly he had quickly finished up his performance to make certain she would be all right; but when he was ready to insist she return to their tent and back to bed, he simply hadn't been able to do it. Not with the half-angry, half-desperate look in her eyes. He knew he was being too over-protective. He knew she would have to start moving about again lest she lose all the beautiful strength in her limbs. But he hadn't wanted her to over strain herself too soon.

She had died in his arms. He knew that she did not believe that … but Arabella had stopped breathing. Her heart had stopped beating. He knew, because he'd held her tightly against him. He'd pressed his ear to her breast and held his own breath to listen for it. There had been no sign of life.

He would be damned before letting her risk too much too soon!

When Erik was in his night clothes and Bella settled comfortably against him on the cot, Erik carefully tucked a blanket around her, and gently guided her head to his shoulder while he read about a terrible libertine Vicomte and his ex-lover, another aristocrat, who scheme and plot with - and against - each other to ruin the lives of people around them. Bella so loved listening to Erik read, and having him so safely close often made her drowsy enough to fall asleep with the rumbling of his chest reverberating against her cheek and ear. To him it was the happiest time of his day. Feeling a young beautiful woman growing trustingly limp against him.

"When I came out into society I was 15." Erik read. "I already knew that the role I was condemned to, namely to keep quiet and do what I was told, gave me the perfect opportunity to listen and observe. Not to what people told me, which naturally was of no interest to me, but whatever it was they were trying to hide. I practiced detachment. I learned to look cheerful while under the table I stuck a fork into the back of my hand. I became a virtuoso of deceit. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think, and novelists to see what I could get away with, and in the end it all came down to one one wonderfully simple principle: Live or die."

He paused, chuckling and making Arabella's eyes flutter open. Her head shifted against him so she could peer up at him, and her hair grazed across the slight aperture of his night shirt. The sensation made Erik shudder slightly in reaction, and his hand stilled momentarily in her hair.

"What is it?" she demanded. "What's so funny? The woman is a conniving demon!"

"Yes, but she has a point." Erik replied, chuckling again; grateful for the distraction from the tiny sensation of her hair. "Listen. This woman knows that she must appear a certain way, but she does not like what life has allotted her. So she decides to find out exactly how to appear to be what society wants, while being exactly who she wishes to be, otherwise. We could learn a thing or two, even if she is a hardhearted b-"

He stopped before he could curse, and blushed slightly.

"...bird." he finally finished weakly, making Arabella giggle. When she laughed, her entire body quivered against him. "She knows how to survive; even at the expense of others."

Bella lifted up onto one elbow, leaning over him enough that he was intensely aware of her curves lightly brushing the scrawny lines of his own body. She wasn't leaning on him at all now, but she was just so … she couldn't hold herself entirely away when it was clear that she intended to drop back down onto his shoulder again.

Erik deplored his body. He was hideous enough as it was, and as of late he'd been growing some truly hideous pimples. His face had them the worst, because the mask that covered it most of the day was a perfect breeding ground for the aggravating little pustules. Now here he was lying next to his stunning young wife, and his body had to behave so beastly!

It was not as if he did not understand his physical reactions to her. What annoyed him the most was how easily and randomly his body would react to stimuli. The most inconvenient time was here in their bed, when she was so close and all he wanted to do was reach out and pull her close against him. To touch her. To-

He broke that thought off viciously, shifting uncomfortably and trying to nonchalantly re-arrange the blankets on them to hide his as-yet slight condition. There had been plenty of books in his mothers home – some of which Madeleine had probably been completely unaware in his fathers' old study. Books about men, women, boys, girls, and how they all should properly conduct themselves in life. Erik read passage after passage about how the right thing to do when seized by the devils' desires was to lie on a cold floor or take a cold bath. A gentleman never bothered his wife – always his wife, never another woman if he was a true gentleman – unless he was trying to conceive an heir with her. There were very specific ways to go about doing that, too. And if one was not trying to have a child, a man should not bother his wife at all. The book claimed that women despised sexual intercourse anyways, so there was no need to be a sinful beast and ask such a thing of her unless she was trying to get with child.

Certainly the books condemned self-gratification. It was a sinful waste, and the book claimed that too much of that led to madness and insanity.

Erik wondered how it was the entire world wasn't insane. He lived among the Romany now, and none of them were ever shy about their sexuality. Men and women were quite bold in their public displays of affection. They even had sexual encounters out in the comparative open, since privacy was such a hard thing to come by in a gypsy camp. To Erik it looked as if both parties tended to enjoy the acts greatly, and they certainly didn't abide by the strict rules and conditions of intercourse he'd read about.

But his sweet gypsy princes … she had endured so much. And she was trapped with a hideous creature for a husband. He could not imagine she would ever be able to overcome the traumas of her youth even if she decided to. He knew she would be a good wife who did as was asked of her … but he was much too ashamed of himself to ever dare ask. He had no intentions of ever asking her such a favor … and he certainly wouldn't want to ask such a thing of her this soon after her liberation from her fathers' tyranny.

"Erik?"

He blinked and looked down into Arabella's beautiful caramel irises. He realized he'd been distracted from whatever she had been saying.

"I'm sorry." he apologized, clearing his throat uneasily. "The day has just caught up with me. What were you saying, ma belle?"

Frowning, Bella reached up and lightly brushed her fingers down the side of his face, avoiding the sores caused by chafed pimples. Erik's eyes fluttered closed and his body clenched slightly at the touch. Always it clenched; partly still afraid of oncoming pain, but also barely able to restrain its' relief and joy. He had never thought he would experience such a kind caress... such a loving touch. Yet Bella gave these touches very freely, and he still could not convince himself that it was real!

Other parts of his stubbornly disgusting body twitched in jealousy that his face was the part being caressed.

"Never mind, miri kom." she sighed. "Let's put the book aside and we'll read more tomorrow. You really do look exhausted."

"Exhausted, well-rested, it doesn't really matter." Erik muttered as he obediently put a leaf in the book to hold their page, and placed it aside before blowing out the small oil lamp at their bedside. Sighing heavily he settled into a more comfortably lying-down position and waited for Bella to get comfortable against him. He wrapped one arm carefully around her, his thumb and forefinger drawing circles on her upper arm. "I will never look better from one mood to the next."

"Shhh." Bella soothed. She was not scolding him. If she scolded him for his self-debasement, she would never get any rest. "Get some rest, Erik. Tomorrow, things will be better."

Slowly, he kissed the crown of her head, breathing deeply to take in the smell of wood smoke that had infused her hair.

"Yes." he agreed. "We have that to look forward to."

Tonight, at least, his unexpected and unwelcome discomfort was not extreme. He detested himself every time his body refused to calm down. When he woke in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning and felt so desperate for relief that he'd either unwillingly and unconsciously embarrassed himself, or he had to explain that he was going "into the trees" to relieve himself when the type of relief he sought was entirely different than what Bella surely suspected.

Bella was no pure innocent that did not understand the way men's bodies worked. But he still couldn't bring himself to admit to her he was so subhuman that he couldn't completely control himself around her. She knew already that he'd experienced some desire for her … an intellectual desire that he hoped she had not realized was more and more violently physical with every day they lived under the same canvas roof. After all she had endured … she deserved a reprieve from such despicable desire.