"Do you love me like that?" she said.
"Yes," he answered.
"And have you loved me all along like that?"
"All along," he said.
"And will you always love me like that?"
"Like that," he said, "although I have lost you."
The girl stood with her arms hanging, her lips parted, her slender face gleaming like a flower, her hair spun darkness. The silence, the vast unending silence, the mystery of a newly minted world, lay about her, as they lay about that first woman, created by Divine enchantment, in the wilderness of Asia.
When she spoke again, her voice was so low that the man could hardly hear it. It was like a voice carried by the night over a great distance.
"But you have not lost me," she said.