"And that's why you wish to send him away? To protect him from Cleopatra?"
"In part. In part, yes. But I also wish for him to have some adventure, some new experience. Something that will fill the need he feels for her. It's as if he's discovered new truths about himself. And if he simply crawls back into the cave of his life and licks his gentlemanly wounds, his obsession with her will grow. And then he might try to look for her. Think of what a disaster that could be, Ramses. What an absolute disaster!"
"But you cannot send him around the world forever, Julie."
"I cannot. But I can hope that if he strikes out with this new sense of himself, this new desire to be loved, as he puts it, it will guide him to something else entirely new. Some new passion. Some new woman. Something that will make his thoughts of Cleopatra a distant memory."
"But Alex Savarell has no passions. This is what makes him Alex Savarell."
"The old version of him, yes. But you didn't see the man I saw today, Ramses. He's as changed as we are, only he hasn't consumed the elixir."
"So you wish to send him off in search of a new lover?"
"Or maybe not. Perhaps many lovers! Let him lose himself entirely in the realm of the senses. Let him move to a tropical isle and read nothing but this D. H. Lawrence fellow. It doesn't matter, Ramses. What matters is that he satisfy this hunger he now feels in some way that doesn't involve that creature. If he needs a harem to do it, I shall fund every last courtesan."
"Your twentieth century, it has foolish ideas when it comes to harems. Their members were not dolls or statues. They had feelings, requests, demands. The management of a harem was not quite the escape a London aristocrat would like to believe."
"Ramses. Be serious."
"I am, Julie," he said, stroking her hair from her face. "I see that in this moment you are very serious, and very much afraid."
"But you do not share my feelings."
"If Cleopatra truly wishes to do Alex harm, why did she linger in Alexandria with her handsome new companion? You asked this yourself."
"And you have said she is unknowable. It's possible she is not truly Cleopatra at all, but some vicious clone. How else to explain her callous disregard for life?"
"In her family, success was measured in how quickly one killed one's siblings and ascended to the throne. That is one possible explanation for what you now call disregard."
"I don't speak of her actions in Alexandria. I speak of Cairo only months ago. She murdered at random, Ramses. Men she seduced in alleyways. We have the clippings. We know it was her. Why are you defending her?"
"I don't defend her," he said quietly. "And I don't defend my actions in the Cairo Museum. Perspective, Julie. That is what I seek to offer you in this moment."
"Perspective," Julie whispered, as if she had forgotten the meaning of the word.
"I say this. If she has the callous disregard for life you claim and she wished to do Alex harm, he would be dead already."
"But don't you see? That's not the type of harm I fear."
"What is it, darling? What is it that you fear?"
"I fear that she will turn him into a kind of companion. That he w
ill give himself over to her too fully and become a companion in her darkness."
"And you fear this because his feelings for her have made him unrecognizable?"
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes. Ramses. Exactly."
"I see."
But he seemed to have no response to this, and the silence that followed allowed the extremity of her thoughts to hang heavily upon her.
"Oh, I know it's absurd. Sending him on a trip around the world. He would never agree to it. But if there was anything I could do to make him impervious to her charms should she enter his life again, I would do it. I would do it right this instant."
"This is your guilt, Julie. You believe your lack of love for Alex made him vulnerable to her."
"You're right. I know that you're right. But to see him so changed, Ramses. On the one hand it was exhilarating, but to know that she was the source of it."