What I heard then was the melody of children at play, nothing but that. And I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that chorus.
And despite our tiffs, despite all the fuss and faces she made and the danger and hopelessness of it all, despite all that, I was in paradise. Paradise whose skies were the colour of hell-flames, but a paradise still.