No; the twice-jilted Susan was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the fragrance of a new spring 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 Doctor Isaac, the foreign mysterious stranger with the large dog, had a full life in which he was lost forever in the wilds of the Amazon, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one quizzical girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most looming, inchoate day when the letter on the bureau had brought him to her attention.
   Only in this moment of extremity could it have happened that a confused chorus of greetings from the courtyard shattered her composure into a million ultramarine pieces! She dropped the brimming wine glass heedlessly on the rug. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the inchoate and masculine face she had come to know so well! “Even the crafty Judas couldn’t keep me from you,” he stammered in one frantic breath while it dawned on her that her days of loneliness were over. “I need you, you dangerous, bloody Lolita, you!”
   At that moment as he slid the little ring onto her finger, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not foreign. Wthout him, could she ever have realized that it was now only a matter of time before they would be feeding off of each other's precious bodily secretions?