So what do I do? What do I do to get the image of Viper out of my mind? How do I get rid of these conflicting feelings for a predator? There's something strange going on in my soul. But what? There's no name for it. You can't go any further, you can't enjoy the company of a mortal. You cannot allow yourself to think of her, allow yourself to savour her beauty, and her voice. Her existence. She is nothing but a food source… Damn, it's so easy to say all this! However, I haven't even tried to carry out my own plans to banish Viper from my head and force my own thoughts into submission. I'm sure I'll have the willpower to give her up later, in case I feel like I'm infatuated with Viper beyond measure. I will simply forget about her and erase her image, but until that moment of collapse comes, I will try to understand these feelings, to comprehend this mystery, to try to solve the riddle of this mortal.
It will be a kind of experiment for me to find out how strong I am and how much my mind obeys me. Just seeing Viper. Just talking to her, hearing her voice, and looking into her bright dark eyes that always held a slight sadness and some reticence. I felt there was something beautiful behind that barrier, something that could only be unravelled when I succeeded in destroying that wall.
Viper's soul is like a pearl languishing in a hard shell at the bottom of an ocean trough.
Cedric Morgan's behaviour discouraged me. Well, how could one understand this strange guy? One minute he is insulting, the next he is apologising! Then he is cold and angry, calling me a coward, accusing me of cowardice, and suddenly he seeks to meet me! He even apologised twice, and, as if to make amends for his rudeness, shared something very personal with me. When Cédric talked about Charles Baudelaire, I felt a kindred spirit in him. I was inexpressibly pleased by Morgan's reasoning, for I had reasoned the same way myself. He put into words what I felt when I read the gloomy works of this great French poet.
What a pity that I do not speak French, so that, like Cédric, I could feel the true beauty and original thoughts of Baudelaire, not distorted by the Czech translation! But, even in a very distorted form, his poems remained beautiful.
Cedric is a romantic. It can't be otherwise. He who favours Goethe, Petrarch and Baudelaire cannot be a mere detached connoisseur without experiencing the force and power of the genius of these authors. They can only be understood by one in whose soul there is romance. When I saw how engrossed Cedric was in our conversation about poetry and literature, I realised that he was seriously interested in it. But while we were almost unanimous on poetry, our tastes in literature were monumentally different: Cedric liked serious, heavy literature, while I preferred the light and captivating genre of vampire novels.
"Well, now he thinks I'm thoughtless… Who cares what he thinks, though?" I thought with distaste. – I thought grudgingly, but in my heart I admitted to myself that it was important to know what he thought. What could I hope for, though? In Cedric's eyes, I looked stupid, or even shallow. But, God, he's so strange. And he's so persuasive. I was determined to refuse his help, and I had already said goodbye to him, but tomorrow I'm meeting him in the library!
