" ..."I know it is a trick, I mean a dupe, but still - Do you ever make him talk to you, alone? the two of you? No, that's silly, isn't it."
"Not at all." Istvan pauses, considering, smiling, Rupert or Decca would recognize that smile. Finally "He sleeps," says Istvan, "with a black cloth across his face. It keeps his soul primed.... Does that give you your answer?" and before she can give him hers, continues: "They are toys, philosophical toys, as we are puppets really, to our base desires. Don't you see the same, in that Blue Room of yours? What man owns his soul in there? Does he not instead give it into your hands, to manipulate as you do his prick?"
"Turn it like a crank," says Lucy, suddenly grinning, a funny wolfish look Istvan has never seen her wear: it surprises him into laughter, both of them chuckling as "We are so much alike, you and I," he says, bending to kiss her cheek. "Both of us vendors of the art of the moment, the impermanent pleasure, the will-o'-the-wisp that lifts a man from the prison of time, and for just that moment sets him free... "

― Kathe Koja