“Yes, yes, yes. And she’s quite right,” exclaimed Ram-Ram. “This place has the richest psychological climate in the world, you know. Cynthia, the girl with the chocolate, doesn’t necessarily think that Christ was a woman, but that she is a woman and she is Christ. A subtle difference, don’t you see? She annoys our psychological colleagues no end, of course, but she won’t back down and be the Virgin Mary. Watch. Look now,” Ram-Ram pointed, and Jeffery turned to see Cynthia, a girl in her twenties, move among the multitude. At least, from her manner and bearing, that was certainly what she thought she was doing; offering each inmate a sliver of chocolate; smiling with the sweetest generosity, so that Jeffery himself was almost taken in, at least for a moment. “Why, it’s incredible. She obviously believes it,” he gasped.

Ram-Ram was getting more and more excited. He wet his lips, and as if addressing a class, he said to Jeffery, “Don’t you see? Her father brings her the candy bars. She distributes them instead of fishes—”

Queen Alice said comfortably, “She’s writing a bible of her own in her spare time. I might help her type it.”

“Oh, God,” Jeffery cried, “You really are mad, the both of you!”

“What do you expect? This is a mental institution,” Ram-Ram said, laughing; then, slyly, “Without madness, there’d be no sanity in the world. Don’t you agree, Queen Alice?”

Jeffery didn’t hear her answer. He sat with his head in his arms, overcome by the deepest sense of desolation he’d ever known. “And I must share some of that madness,” he said soberly. “I thought I saw you physically in my apartment, and physically at least you were here. There must be a kind of contagion, so that the brain no longer distinguishes reality. It must perceive bits and pieces that don’t agree. Maybe I mixed a memory of a past visit of yours with reality—”

“Now, now, don’t take it so hard,” Ram-Ram said. He took Jeffery’s hand reassuringly before Jeffery wrenched it away. The girl, Cynthia, hearing the commotion, came over and offered Jeffery another sliver of chocolate. “Take it away,” he said angrily. Then, looking up, he saw her eyes. They weren’t Christ’s eyes—who knew what Christ’s eyes looked like? But they were the eyes Christ should have had, in which all contradictions vanished or were resolved, in whose glance he suddenly saw himself, a person of dignity despite all of his own vast misunderstandings. He took the candy and said, “Thank you,” with a simplicity and grace he didn’t know he possessed.