Nobody knew he had lost his heart to a woman with veiled eyes and hair red enough to burn you. She had attracted him with her refusal to talk, to look towards him as if he had any existence in this world at all. He had followed her home; he had waited until the curtains were pulled across the sad, empty windows and then he had knocked just once placing his left hand across his chest in salutation , handsome devil that he was. She had opened the door and stared at his hand. No one should do that to a hand. He had touched her neck and traced the white line below her right ear. He brought his mouth to her throat and slowly licked out the letters of her name. She had known him then of course. No one had called her that for three hundred years.