In one version he'd have left her soon after he met her, but she was
teaching him ways past the quicksand and crypts, the dead ends he
came to think would undo him without her.
In another it was the vein of obligation spun seemingly out of her
bosom that held him: he roved and raged, raged and roved, but it
still bound him to her.
The episode of his confession has her scouring his psyche with
caustic correctives: she so comprehended his flaws, could so expli-
cate his weaknesses —how could he not stay with her?
Finale and coda: out past the monsters of conscience, through
labyrinths of guilt and contrition, detested, envenomed, he found
himself back in the world beyond myth; no longer merely paroled
but—he hardly knew what to do with himself—free.
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