Jeanne Kalogridis

The sensation that seized me that morning__he twentieth of May__s I sat on my velvet cushion beside the Pope and stared down at the man standing beside my husband, was swift, irrevocable, and violent, like a dagger plunged into the heart. I trembled. I did not want it; I did not seek it; yet there it was, and I was at the mercy of it. And I knew nothing of the man who had just stolen my soul.