They are both subtly shocked by what Father Shearing has said and for another long uneasy moment neither speaks. Then he says with a sigh, as if he has already blundered too far, he cannot retreat, “. . . Did you ever come close to drowning? . . . no? That’s fortunate. Or maybe it isn’t: you learn certain things, you’re baptized. I was about eleven years old, diving off a dock, and somehow it happened that I struck the water at the wrong angle, stunned myself, couldn’t surface, kept sinking . . . and everything was very green, very dark. . . . What struck me at the time was the perpendicular nature of . . . of the experience. The surface of the water was high up, far over my head, farther than any ceiling I had ever seen; the bottom was muddy, black. . . . I remember being pulled down. It was as if a force was pulling me down. And then . . .”

“What happened?” Marya asks. “Did someone save you?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember!” Marya says. The tension between them makes her nervously giddy, chiding. “How can you not remember?”

“I assume I was saved,” Father Shearing says dryly. “Or maybe I saved myself. But afterward I was violently sick to my stomach and passed out and really didn’t remember. Yes, someone hauled me out of the water, I was told that had happened, but I didn’t really remember and I don’t remember now.” He pauses, breathing hard. “I’ve forgotten why I’m telling you this. Something about the green, the dark . . . being sucked down. . . . Baptized in that way. . . .”

“It must have been a terrifying experience,” Marya says, licking her lips.

“Don’t be stupid, Marya,” Father Shearing says at once. “All experience is terrifying.”

Marya blinks in surprise as if he has slapped her.

Then he says, reaching over suddenly to take hold of her hand, to grip her fingers tight in his, “But don’t be afraid, I can show you the way.”

Marya is too shocked to resist. Her immediate concern is simply for the opened door—what if someone enters, what if they are seen? Her heart is beating so powerfully she is close to fainting. She has been thrown off balance and obliged to lean far forward, clumsily, precariously—

Father Shearing’s words now tumble from his lips, not quite coherently, but with feeling, animation. He is trying to explain to Marya about something he always wanted: not Aristotle’s God, not Thomas’s. Not God at all, perhaps.

“. . . everything,” he whispers, staring at her.

Marya is suspended, undefined. She tells herself this is sin, sinful, but she isn’t frightened, she can wrench her hand from his if she wishes, she can stammer an excuse and escape if she wishes.

He continues to grip her hand. Tight, tighter. He clears his throat and says dryly, self-mockingly, “I only wanted everything, Marya, was that too much to ask . . . ?”