"What would you say," he burst out before he could have second thoughts, "if I told you that there may be a way to cure you."       She was speechless.       "The price would be high," he cautioned.  "You would no longer be able to befriend any human being, but you could finally see and hear the world you long for."       "Are you some demon," she asked, "to offer me such a bargain?"  She seemed frightened not so much of Alec as of what he was suggesting.       "Not far from it," he told he solemnly.  This was not the time for lies or half-truths.       She closed her eyes, trying to digest what he was saying.  When she opened them again, her face was clear and certain.       "I know who and what I am," she began.  "I am Helen, a lowly mortal treading very close, in this moment, to damnation.  Before I give you my answer, I must know: who are you?"       "My name now is Alec Drake," he started, "but it is only one of a dozen names I've used.  I was born little different from any other child, but then I fell in love and went to war..."      He told her everything--everything that he had been holding inside of himself for centuries.  He spoke with barely a pause for hours, finally outlining the details of what he was suggesting they do.       Helen listened, rapt, until his words trailed away into stillness.  No one she had ever met had come so close to understanding her own lonliness and isolation from the world.  He was a hard man, but not proud.  Not any longer.  He had been proud and defiant once, and was paying the price.       She raised her hands to cup his face.  "What you offer--sight, sound--is not enough incentive to give up my soul..."  Before he could slump, defeated, she continued, "...but one thing is.  To end your lonliness and mine would be worth nearly any price.  I could stand an eternity of darkness if I could share it with you."       He clasped her to his chest and kissed her again and again and again.  Here, in this tiny hotel room in some forgotten town, was what he had been waiting for for centuries.       The rest was simple.  There were enough hours of darkness left to take care of logistics.  When they walked arm-in-arm out the front door an hour before dawn, chattering gaily, no one noticed.  No one noticed Helen's disappearance, either.  They thought what Alec and Helen wanted them to think.  In the end, they always did.                                                                       Finis