I kept staring at the Dixie Gates. I couldn’t get the beauty of the twinkling lights out of my head. I wanted to see a church with candles—lots of small flickering candles like the candles I’d seen in Notre Dame. Fumes rising from their wicks like prayers.

An hour till sunrise. Enough time. I headed slowly downtown.

The St. Louis Cathedral had been locked all night, but these locks were nothing to me.

I stood in the very front of the church, in the dark foyer, staring at the bank of candles burning beneath the statue of the Virgin. The faithful made their offerings in the brass coin box before lighting these candles. Vigil lights, they called them.

Often I’d sat in the square in the early evening, listening to these people come and go. I liked the smell of the wax; I liked the small shadowy church which seemed to have changed not one whit in over a century. I sucked in my breath and then I reached into my pockets, drew out a couple of crumpled dollars, and put them through the brass slot.

I lifted the long wax wick, dipped it into an old flame, and carried the fire to a fresh candle, watched the little tongue grow orange and bright.

What a miracle, I thought. One tiny flame could make so many other flames; one tiny flame could set afire a whole world. Why, I had, with this simple gesture, actually increased the sum total of light in the universe, had I not?

Such a miracle, and for this there will never be an explanation, and there are no Devil and God speaking together in a Paris café. Yet David’s crazed theories soothed me when I thought of them in reverie. “Increase and multiply,” said the Lord, the great Lord, Yahweh—from the flesh of the two a multitude of children, like a great fire from only two little flames …

There was a noise suddenly, sharp, distinct, ringing through the church like a deliberate footfall. I froze, quite astonished that I hadn’t known someone was there. Then I remembered Notre Dame, and the sound of the child’s steps on the stone floor. A sudden fear swept over me. She was there, wasn’t she? If I looked around the corner, I would see her this time, maybe with her bonnet on, and her curls straggling from the wind, and her hands wrapped in woolen mittens, and she’d be looking up at me with those immense eyes. Golden hair and beautiful eyes.

There came a sound again. I hated this fear!

Very slowly I turned, and I saw Louis’s unmistakable form emerging from the shadows. Only Louis. The light of the candles slowly revealed his placid and slightly gaunt face.

He had on a dusty sad coat, and his worn shirt was open at the collar, and he looked faintly cold. He approached me slowly and clasped my shoulder with a firm hand.

“Something dreadful’s going to happen to you again,” he said, the light of the candles playing exquisitely in his dark green eyes. “You’re going to see to it. I know.”