“This should make him happy. This should change him. But it doesn't. It can't. He's been changed already. And I don't know what to write anymore, because I'm afraid of what it will be. Because I can't think, and she asks me to write, but I won't know what to write. I can't think. I can't think. Isobel. Isobel. Isobel.”

“Isobel's head popped up. "What does 'sagacious' mean?""Sagacious," he said, writing, "adjective describing someone in possession of acute mental faculties. Also describing one who might, in a bookstore, think to get up and locate an actual dictionary instead of asking a billion questions.”

“My beautiful, my Isobel. My Love. You ask me to wait. And so I wait.For all of this, I know, is but a dream.And when, in sleep, at last we wake,I will see you again.”

“But, Isobel thought with a bleak and sad smile, what better place to bury what was dead than in a cemetery?”

“In the shadows of the dreamland, he waits. He watches the gaping windows to the world he had so longed to open. Now flown wide, bleak and empty, ravaged-like him-it grants his wish. He belongs. It cannot compare to the memory of her eyes. Blue azure, warm as a summer sky. If he could but fall into their world. Would that he had. Now he write the end to the story that past its Midnight Dreary-that too late and hour-has its own without him. It was always, he knows now, meant to end this way. Like that circle that "ever returneth into the selfsame spot." My beautiful, my Isobel. My Love. You ask me to wait. And so I wait. For all of this, I know, is but a dream. And when, in sleep, at last we wake, I will see you again.”

“Learn to awaken within your dreams, Isobel.”

“Can I tell you something?" He tilted his head, moving in closer still, so close that she could feel his breath against her cheek. "Do you want to know what my grandma used to say about kisses on the forehead?"He pressed his lips to her brow, holding the silk soft kiss for a long moment while Isobel stood in place, unable to bring herself to shove him away."She told me it’s the kind of kiss we save for the dead.”