“She came, gentle and sweet, bringing peace, at a time when I was the loneliest and most miserable boy in the world. She made all my secrets vanish into her. For she made me feel that everything I had kept secret was kept back just to tell her—we were joined within a secret that was divulged to us by touching where we had never touched before, and by the honesty of passion where we had been dishonest before. After our honesty with each other, what more was there to hide? We had told. Passionate love is a conspiracy to tell each other’s truth to each other—that I am like this and you are like that, and together, in a joining, we make a moment’s truth of what each is. Beyond the moment’s truth, though, lies the hour’s untruth, which keeps yearning to be bared into truth again. She broke my unreality against her reality like a pot dashed against her reality like a pot dashed against her reality like a pot dashed against and mended me with all the care in the world, it seemed. For her I betrayed you and for myself I betrayed her; we melted into each other. I tricked you and left you; and after I had left you, all your kin and all your world died away from you and fell away, leaving you broken off and isolate. All of us were shattered from our whole, I roaming through the world with Evella, you sitting by the window trying to piece everything together again in a falling house. (The House of Breath)