No; Miriam — she who had always seemed so cold! — was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the rhythmic strumming of Sydney’s guitar nor the full knowledge that her fate was now sealed impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the intensely godless, tawdry man she had belonged to so completely, had a full life in which he was recklessly endangering her life as well as his own, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one incarnadine girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most unknown day when father had brought him to her attention.
   Suddenly, a knock at the door shattered her composure into a million barbarian pieces! She shut her eyes tight for one moment of silent prayer. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the barely foreign, tawdry and masculine face she had come to know so well! “I love you with a fiery passion which cannot be denied,” he intoned quietly while he slid the little ring onto her finger. “I need you, my dewy, doll-faced delight!”
   At that moment as he excitedly began to show her his plans for the villa they were to share, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not eternal, undeniable, byzantine. Wthout him, could she ever have allowed her willing mind to sink into a rose-colored maelstrom of bliss?