Amel had been listening, and put a hand on Lucy’s arm. “You’re right, Lucy—or at least, that is my opinion also. T. S. Eliot said we should be still, and let God’s infinite darkness come upon us. The stained glass drenches us in exquisite light, and such subtle vibrations are indeed like music. If you see it—hear it—feel it—you do: when we can respond, we approach our most divine status.”

“I think that’s true,” Alex agreed. “If it is within your cognizance to see angels or ghosts or gods, then you will see them. If they’re not part of your thinking, then you won’t. Some people seem to project them, make them real. And others seem sensitive to what my mother called the ‘telluric currents’ running beneath us here. You’re just like her, Lucy, experiencing them in a sonorous, visible, luminous way. Ultimately, who can decide which way of seeing is truth, and which is only an illusion?”

Lucy kissed him. They each saw the world a little differently, each accepted the other’s variance of vision. She was secure in what she saw, keenly sensitive to the world around her since her illness; but not being threatened, she had no need to browbeat others over it, no compulsion to convince Alex of her version of events. On April 23, Shakespeare’s and St. George’s days, the thirty-fourth degree of the zodiac had allowed her to cross over worlds—had yielded a vision that Temple had shared with her, pushing his health over the edge. She couldn’t fully explain it to Alex, nor properly describe the rose scent that haunted her, the light she often saw, which some people might recast as an angel. He respected her intelligence enough to offer her largesse of spirit. He would always listen to her, was intellectually generous enough never to dismiss her perspective. This made him the only truly strong man she’d ever known.

While Max and his grandfather were packing away the instruments, and their other friends toured the cathedral, Alex accompanied Lucy to the labyrinth they’d walked yesterday. Afterward, Alex’s godfather and a monsignor of Chartres had offered them their views on some of its fascinating questions. Lucca had the same labyrinth carved on a pillar, with a Latin inscription which translated as: “This is the labyrinth built by the Cretan Daedalus. No one has ever found the exit except Theseus, thanks to Ariadne’s thread.”