She stood at once. Breathing heavily, she smoothed down her pinafore. Her eyes darted around the library again. The man was still positioned strategically between her and the door. He raised a hand toward her wing chair.
“Please, Constance,” he said. “Sit down.”
Warily, she seated herself.
“May we speak now, like civilized people, without further outbursts?”
“You dare speak of yourself as civilized? You? A serial killer and thief.” She laughed scornfully.
The man nodded slowly, as if ingesting this. “Naturally, my brother has taken a certain line with you. After all, it’s worked so well for him in the past. He’s an extraordinarily persuasive and charismatic individual.”
“You can’t presume to imagine I’d believe anything you say. You’re insane—or worse, you do these things as a sane man.” She again glanced past him, toward the library exit and the reception hall beyond.
The man gazed back at her. “No, Constance. I am not insane—on the contrary, like you, I greatly fear insanity. You see, the sad fact is, we have a great deal in common—and not just that which we fear.”
“We haven’t the slightest in common.”
“No doubt this is what my brother would like you to believe.”
It seemed to Constance that the man’s expression had become one of infinite sadness. “It’s true that I am far from perfect and cannot yet expect your trust,” he went on. “But I hope you understand that I intend you no hurt.”
“What you intend means nothing. You’re like a child who befriends a butterfly one day to pull off its wings the next.”
“What do you know of children, Constance? Your eyes are so wise and so old. Even from here, I can see the vast experience written there. What strange and terrible things they must have seen! How very penetrating your gaze! It fills me with sadness. No, Constance: I sense—I know—that childhood was a luxury you were denied. Just as I myself was denied it.”
Constance went rigid.
“Earlier, I said I was here because it’s time we spoke. It is time that you learned the truth. The real truth.”
His voice had sunk so low that the words were only just audible. Against her will, she asked, “The truth?”
“About the relationship between me and my brother.”
In the soft light of the dying fire, Diogenes Pendergast’s peculiar eyes looked vulnerable, almost lost. Gazing back at her, they brightened slightly.
“Ah! Constance, it must sound impossibly strange to you. But gazing on you like this, I feel I would do anything in my power to lift from you that burden of pain and fear and carry it myself. And do you know why? Because when I look at you, I see myself.”
Constance did not reply. She merely sat, motionless.
“I see a person who longs to fit in, to be merely human, and yet who is destined always to remain apart. I see a person who feels the world more deeply, more intensely, than she is willing to admit… even to herself.”
Listening, Constance began to tremble.
“I sense both pain and anger in you. Pain at being abandoned—not once, but several times. And anger at the sheer capriciousness of the gods. Why me? Why again? For it’s true: you’ve been abandoned once again. Though not, perhaps, in exactly the way you imagined it. Here, too, we are the same. I was abandoned when my parents were burned to death by an ignorant mob. I escaped the flames. They did not. I’ve always felt that I should have died, not them; that it was my fault. You feel the same way about the death of your own sister, Mary—that it was you, instead of she, who should have died. Later, I was abandoned by my brother. Ah: I see the disbelief in your face. But then again, you know so little about my brother. All I ask is that you hear me with an open mind.”
He rose. Constance took in a sharp breath, half rising herself.
“No,” Diogenes said, and once again Constance stopped. There was nothing in his tone but weariness now. “There’s no need to run. I’ll take my leave of you. In the future, we’ll speak again, and I’ll tell you more about the childhood I was denied. About the older brother who took the love I offered and flung back scorn and hatred. Who took pleasure in destroying everything I created—my journals of childish poetry, my translations of Virgil and Tacitus. Who tortured and killed my favorite pet in a way that, even today, I can barely bring myself to think about. Who made it his mission in life to turn everyone against me, with lies and insinuations, to paint me as his evil twin. And when in the end none of this could break my spirit, he did something so awful… so, so awful…” But at this, his voice threatened to break. “Look at my dead eye, Constance: that was the least of what he did…”