As a seminarian, even in his early twenties, Clifford Shearing began to publish theological and philosophical essays. He has lent Marya several journals—Thomist Quarterly, Thought, Renascence, American Metaphysics—and she has carefully read his pieces, not with full comprehension, perhaps, but with unqualified awe. To be able to write so well, to wield such a vocabulary; to argue so powerfully; to ferret out miscalculations in a rival’s thesis to a mere hair’s-breadth of a degree . . . she wonders if it is an entirely masculine skill, an art of combat by way of language, forever beyond her.

Lately, however, Father has expressed impatience with his earlier writings. He has boasted that his new position will make certain fossilized priest-scholars sit up and take notice. “If only I can find the precise words, the perfect words. . . . If only I can duplicate my vision in this absurd fallen world. . . .”

Marya appears at St. Joseph’s three afternoons in succession. The floor nurses have begun to regard her with a certain bewildered respect, or is it resentment? Surely in all the diocese a man of Father Shearing’s distinction might find someone more appropriate to assist him. This graceless high school girl, shy, unsmiling, secretive, always hurrying as if she feared being challenged and sent away: where, they wonder, did Father come upon her? And isn’t she in any case rather young?

If man tries to reach God through the discipline of the intellect the only God accessible is Aristotle’s . . . the unmoved mover, the self-thinking thought . . . pure act . . . a God to whom creation can have no meaning and the individual no existence. It is the God-beyond-measurement we seek, wholly God and yet not specifically God-as-man: for God-as-man is Christ, and Christ supremely, in the mystery of the Incarnation. Consequently our perspective must be violently altered if. . . .

As Marya prepares to leave, Father Shearing takes hold of her arm and says, “You won’t abandon me, will you? Suddenly? Overnight? There’s no one else,” he continues, faltering, vague, confused, “this seems to be a corner position—uncharted—terra incognita—”

MARYA DREAMS OF cool chaste white walls, a cloistered cell with a grilled window, a small altar on which have been placed a representation of Christ, a Bible, and a single votive candle. She sees herself as a swift shadowy presence, clad in white, a rosary clicking at her side. . . . But when she asks Father Shearing his opinion of cloistered nuns his attitude is bemused, doubtful. He objects first of all, he says, to the fact that they are cloistered; which obliges others to take care of them. And—as if he can’t resist—“Each of the nuns prides herself on being the bride of Christ! making of poor hapless Jesus a sort of randy harem sheik, a manic polygamist. Really, Marya,” he continues, wriggling the fingers of his good hand, “you must have more sense than that, you aren’t going to hide your talents behind a grilled window.”