As he looked around the room—this cold, uninviting, impersonal room that served as a man’s home—he was struck by the smallness of Max Clinter’s world. He couldn’t be sure what Clinter’s life had been like prior to his encounter with the Good Shepherd, but surely it had withered and contracted in the years since. This cabin, this little box perched on a mound of earth in the middle of a bog in the middle of nowhere, was the den of a hermit. Clinter was a deeply isolated human being, driven by his demons, by his fantasies, by his hunger for revenge. Clinter was Ahab. A wounded, obsessed Ahab. Instead of roaming the sea, he was Ahab lurking in the wilderness. Ahab with guns instead of harpoons. He was locked in his own quest, envisioning nothing but the culmination of his own furious mission, hearing nothing but the voices in his own mind.

The man was utterly alone.

The truth of it, the force of it, brought Gurney to the verge of tears.

Then he realized that the tears weren’t for Max.

They were for himself.

And it was then that the image of Madeleine came to him. The recollection of Madeleine standing on the little rise beyond the birch. On the little rise between the pond and the woods. Standing there, waving good-bye to him. Standing in that wild burst of color and light, waving, smiling. Smiling with an emotion that was far beyond him. An emotion beyond words.

It was like the end of a film. A film about a man who had been given a great gift, an angel to lovingly light his way, an angel who could have shown him everything, led him everywhere, had he only been willing to look and to listen and to follow. But the man had been too busy, too absorbed in too many things, too absorbed by the darkness that challenged and fascinated him, too absorbed by himself. And finally the angel was called away, because she had done all she could do for him, all that he was willing to allow done. She loved him, knew all there was to know of him, loved him and accepted him exactly the way he was, wished him all the love and light and happiness he was capable of accepting, wished him all the best of everything forever. But now it was time for her to go. And the film ended with the angel smiling, smiling with all the love in the world, as she disappeared into the sunlight.

Gurney lowered his head, biting his lip. Tears rolled down his cheeks. And he began to sob. At the imagined film. At the truth of his own life.