Marya sits in the dark, in her coat, staring mesmerized at the screen, waiting to feel something extraordinary. But the exhilaration of the day is winding down. Her nose is running; there is a faint persistent ache in her throat; she is anxious now that she’ll be recognized, or has already been recognized going in the theater—it’s slightly shameful, eccentric, going to a movie alone, especially at such a time. There are so few patrons in the house, Marya is acutely aware of them. A youngish man a few seats to her right (he looks familiar, does she know him? is he perhaps one of Lee’s friends?) has been eyeing her covertly. . . .

She stares mesmerized at the gigantic images flashing before her but in truth she’s seeing nothing, absorbing nothing. And in any case she is obliged to leave the film before its conclusion—she has to be at work by six o’clock. As she is leaving, however, the young man leans toward her with an air of urgency and says, “Hey—how come you’re leaving? don’t you like the movie?” He is sly, grinning, a little nervous. Marya sees that he’s a stranger. “Go to hell,” she says, without troubling to lower her voice.

She stalks out of the Royalton as if she is being observed but of course she is not. Who would be observing her, except God?

AFTERWARD MARYA WILL try to estimate how many conversations she had with Clifford Shearing during the eighteen-month period of their acquaintance. Probably no more than a dozen. Perhaps even less. It was an accident that he led the class in instruction at St. Anne’s—she couldn’t have known, making her blind request for help (“I’m Catholic—I was born Catholic—but I’ve never known what it means”), that Father Shearing would be the person to answer her questions; she had had the confused notion that it would be a nun.