Absolute power was not something I had ever desired--I wouldn't have known what to do with it, even if I had it--and after several failed marriages, I considered eternal happiness a myth. I did, however, remember reading a story years ago about a man who had spent his entire life seeking true love, and when he finally found what he was looking for, discovered that it was not what he had expected or even wanted. He had only discovered the object of true love, but not the feeling which made that experience possible. True love, it seemed, had been forever lost to him, because he himself had turned his back on it, years before. The moral of the story was apparently that you did not seek true love, you found it.

That dredged up memory of some poor soul spending his entire life uselessly seeking true love made me think back over my three marriages, and of my children; about the many women I had known over the years and about the life that I had apparently wasted. Remembering the many times I had been in what I had 'thought' was love, I suddenly realized that I had already experienced true love. With a shock, I knew that I had indeed known true love, once, long ago, and had ended up letting it slip away from me in my desire to seek something more; to seek something somehow better than what I already had.

True love, then, was not something to be captured and retained--it was something much more. 'True Love' was a state of mind; a connection between two hearts and souls that meant different things to different people at different times. I, like many others before me, had once been fortunate enough to have found true love, and then, again like so many others, had unknowingly let it slip from my grasp.

I discovered that I had tears in my eyes and quickly wiped them away.

"What is it you seek, Matthew?" she repeated, just as softly as before, and I once again heard the sad sound of frozen, crystal chimes in the far distance.

For a long time I couldn't answer her--I didn't know how, but I finally raised my head to look at her. "All I seek now is peace of mind," I admitted, quietly, knowing that at this point, all else was most likely lost to me.

She sighed, deeply, and the walls seemed to quiver with her exhalation. "You will not find that here," she whispered, and the quiet, crystal chimes faded to emptiness.