Marya prayed not to think impure thoughts or to wish improper wishes; if, when saying the rosary, she began to pray mechanically, her imagination running wild, she forced herself to go back to the beginning and start again. Saying the rosary was the penance for most of the sins to which she had learned to confess, and saying the rosary again, and yet again, and again, was the penance for not saying it carefully enough, for skipping along the Mysteries when she ought to have been making her way on her knees. A flame of panic touched her, at such times, that she might be condemned to saying the rosary forever; to saying a few beads, losing the thread of her thought, going back to the beginning, and starting again; and again; never advancing more than a few wretched beads, a few murmured words, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee, blessed art Thou amongst women and . . . Forever and ever, Amen: Marya Knauer imprisoned in the circle of hell that was the rosary itself.

She didn’t speak to Father Shearing of this particular terror, which she recognized as mad. Since the early days of her catechism class she had learned to suppress certain aspects of her personality in his presence: above all, any hint of weakness. She might be sinful in thought, word, and deed, but she was not going to be weak.

“HELLO? FATHER SHEARING?” Marya says in a low uncertain voice. “Are you awake?”

It is a cloudy afternoon in late January and Marya, breathing quickly and shallowly (because of the exertion of hurrying up the steep icy hill to St. Joseph’s, because of the hospital smell which she hates), stands in the corridor just outside room 411, staring inside at the figure in the cranked-up hospital bed; telling herself as she invariably does at this moment—Marya is such a child, such a coward—that it isn’t too late, she can always slip away, he hasn’t seen her.