The crossing itself, though complete and unimpeded, had been decided upon on the spur of the moment. As soon as it was done a part of me regretted it. There was Joubert in front of me with the same expression of bewilderment in his eyes that I had seen in Alula’s: the bewilderment of the ambushed soul—a soul that knows something has happened without knowing precisely what. For once the crossing has begun, its effects are so strange and pleasant that it is a rare will that is strong enough to resist it. Resistance, after all, is simple: all that is required to prevent a crossing is to look away. But few who have begun a crossing can defy its seductive pleasures. It was sad to look upon the man I had just been, the body in which I had lived for more than three decades, now sitting directly in front of me with that look of shock upon his face. I took all the money in his possession—he was too deep in his stupefaction to murmur a word of protest—then I wished him well and was gone. Knowing exactly how much more money he kept hidden in the skiff he slept in, I went to the river, found his boat, and took the rest.

Almost as soon as I had left that coffee house in New Orleans I realized something was amiss. I had committed a wrong, perhaps even an evil, and try as I might I would never shake the shadow of my guilt. My first crossing had been motivated by my love for you, but the purpose of my second was more nebulous. It did not take long for the enormity of my wrongdoing to take hold. For as long as I was Joubert, there remained the possibility, however remote, that restitution of the Law might still be possible. Now that I was Feuille, there was no such possibility. Now there could never be a return crossing. I had thrown away any chance that the Law might be preserved. It was desecrated now, once and for all, and I was the one who had desecrated it. But—or so I reasoned to myself—a thing can only be broken once. Once broken, it can be broken again and again, and the result is the same.