I created you, Amanda Harris, from the memories of the two most beautiful creatures I’ve ever met.
Anyone would recognize your lustrous chestnut hair, the devil dancing in your deep blue eyes, or the curve of a wicked smile playing about your lips. I was seduced by all of these things in their owner when he beckoned to lie beside him on the floor, allowing him to instruct me in the ways of forbidden passion.
Your soft chin, your rounded cheeks which give you a childish look, a burst of innocent girlhood ripening into womanhood belonged to another. One I cannot remember, nor can ever forget. She haunts my dreams, calling me by another name, a name I start to say right before I wake up.
All memory of that name and of her fade when I wake up.
I suspect she’s calling me by my true name. Whomever I was before I became Charles Delaware Tate.
How many lives can a single person have?
I suspect my name belonged to the soul, the body of the man whom is now Quentin Collins. A man Victor desired, yet somehow slipped through his fingers.
If Victor…Count Petofi…is telling the truth. It sometimes amuses him to do so.
What do you know of any of these things? You stepped forward from my canvas to linger at Kitty Soames’s side.
I shouldn’t be surprised at your attachment to the lady. Something about her looks make me quiver as if I was on the verge of a memory. Her chin, her cheeks, they’re very like yours. Aren’t they, Amanda?
Nor should I be surprised that you’re so attracted to Quentin. He has your eyes, your hair, your smile, too much of your beauty. If there’s any narcissim in your heart, Amanda, I’m sure you long to entangle yourself with him, seeking that missing half of yourself.
You’ve found no trace of it in me. You recoil from me in horror, from what I reveal, from your connection to me.
I cannot match your playful irreverence. I cannot look at you and feel anything but awe. Awe for your beauty. Awe that you are here. Awe that I was able to bring you to life with a passion for a man, wondering what his beauty would be like in a woman? Giving you those few traces from a girl in my dreams I can barely recall.
You hold the key to my heart, Amanda. Don’t you have any room in your own for me, your creator? The one who idealized you, worshipped you, gave you life and form?
Do you even have a heart, Amanda? For you’re breaking mine. By smiling, breathing, living utterly apart from me.
I have no claims upon your heart, Amanda, even if I created it. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised it doesn’t beat for me.