Oversoul Seven shook his head. Will stood looking out the glassless window at the commotion outside, noticing that the sounds of the street somehow stopped just outside the window, though they should have been only too clear. It was like watching a silent movie, he thought: He could see the merchants’ mouths opening as they spoke; see the carts drawn by the donkeys, but no clatter of wheels or raucous shouts entered that room. Wild, he kept thinking: What a trip. He hoped he’d remember it all.

“Do continue,” Seven was saying to Mary. Then to Will he said, “And I wish you’d come over here and sit down.” Will managed a partially insolent, partially nonchalant stride to show that all of this was too impossible and ridiculous to take his notice for a moment, but he sat down.

Mary gave Will a humble smile as if agreeing that she was, indeed, beneath anyone’s serious consideration. Then she rearranged her robes slightly and, head lowered, she continued. “I tried to be a good woman. Joseph, my husband, was only a lowly carpenter; a virtuous one, it’s true. But from the moment he was born, I thought Jesus was special and I wanted to give him a heritage to be proud of; a gift no one else had …” She paused, looked worried, and eyed Oversoul Seven with an anxious air.

“Do continue. It’s fascinating,” Seven said, without looking at Will, because he was doubly sorry that he’d let him come. This interview wasn’t likely to convince Will that the universe had any sense, Seven told himself. At the same time, Seven had almost forgotten who Mary was supposed to be, in the reality of this woman before him, with her hesitant manner … Seven broke off. Or was her manner suddenly confessional? “Don’t say anything you don’t want to,” he said quickly, but it was too late.

“I never could bring myself to discuss … things of the flesh with my son.” She paused again. “Do you understand?”

“Absolutely,” Oversoul Seven said nervously. “Do you want to change the subject?”

“No, it must be said,” Mary replied resolutely.

“Well, say it, then,” Seven muttered under his breath.

“I told him, my son, that he came from God … without the agency of man. It was only a mother’s innocent deceit.”

“Oh, I knew it,” Will shouted, springing to his feet. He lifted his head dramatically and threw his arms skyward. “Sheer idiocy. Behind every religion, every philosophy. At least the Western ones. Oh, sheer idiocy!”

But Oversoul Seven (still looking like a pilgrim) was at Mary’s side; truly upset. “Now, now, do calm down,” he pleaded.

“My son believed me,” Mary cried in an anguished voice. “He became truly deluded.”