“Nothing will happen to me,” she said. “There is not one, among those who know this place, whom I cannot trust as though he were my blood brother. But what is between us is nobody’s affair; it would vex me to have to explain—” (and now she was smiling again)—“what is inexplicable.... Do you see that?”
“Yes,” he said. “Forgive me....”
Behind them, in a vault that was shaped like a pointed devil’s-ear, a man took himself away from the wall.
“You know what you have to do,” he said in a low voice.
“Yes,” came the voice of the other, idly, sleepily, out of the darkness. “But wait a bit, friend.... I must ask you something....”
“Well?”
“Have you forgotten your own creed?”
For one second a lamp twinkled through the room, that was shaped like a pointed devil’s ear, impaling the face of the man, who had already turned to go, on the pointed needle of its brilliance.
“That sin and suffering are twin-sisters ... you will be sinning against two people, friend....”