ael, slightly tipsily, murmuring behind her, "Will compassion destroy us?"

Edith turned to him in surprise. In the thick darkness, his pale and pinched figure looked mournful and lonely.

"Quenet was right. Neither side can truly accept me. Raphael Saint-Clemont is nothing more than the bat in Aesop''s Fables, neither birds nor beasts willing to acknowledge me!"

"You don''t have to think like that, Raphael. I think Citizen Desmoulins is right. Our hearts have been disturbed too much by this rain. How childish! When the rain stops and the sky clears, everything will be alright." She tugged at the corner of her mouth, the words spoken with a hint of uncertainty.

Raphael walked over to her, gazing together with her at the tempest that had engulfed the whole world. "I''m not as naive as Camille Desmoulins. Will Terror really end automatically by the power of charity? I have a premonition that it will only drag us all towards perdition!"

"Don''t say such things, Raphael." The ominous sense of fatality in his words caught hold of her heart in an instant. Edith''s emotions surged like the rainstorm outside, and tears at once welled up in her eyes.

He reached out and held her hand, his voice ethereal and touching as he murmured, "Love, can this also be a sin?"

Edith was at a loss as Raphael took her hand, bent to press a deep kiss onto it. His lips were feverish, making her entire hand scorching hot, yet a single, icy drop of water landed on her skin.

She realised then that such a fiery kiss could be dangerous for a wom