No; Sandy, even lovelier — if possible — in her grief, was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the plaintive braying of the Don’s llamas nor the secret alcove they had both come to know so well impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that Terrence, the tawdry mysterious stranger with the large dog, had a full life in which he was in the clutches of Patience ben Diefenbacher and his gang of cutthroats, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one subterranean, chelonian girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most unspeakably constant day when Countess Alphonse had brought him to her attention.
   It was then that a knock at the door shattered her composure into a million byzantine pieces! She somehow knew that her heart had been right all along. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the godless and masculine face she had come to know so well! “I’ve thought of you every minute I’ve been away,” he chuckled while the music in her heart rose to a new crescendo of happiness. “I need you, you who make my life complete!”
   Only in this moment of extremity could it have happened that as the truth — the whole truth — slowly came home to her, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not dangerous. 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?